


Sun Goes Down

by thedorkygirl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Aliens, F/F, F/M, Female Protagonist, Science Fiction, War, Western, ships, the dog lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 09:02:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedorkygirl/pseuds/thedorkygirl
Summary: El Shoua has lived on a small backwater planet with her grandfather and aunt for as long as she can remember. When war comes calling, she ends up in the middle of the two sides.





	1. Chapter 1

Aunt Ellen believed firmly in the power of washing behind your ears, and even after El Shoua was grown enough to finish school and work, her aunt would ask her with a look of severe interrogation if she had been sure to scrub there. It was embarrassing for El Shoua, even if they were at home and nobody was there to hear. Sometimes it made her angry that Aunt Ellen couldn't stop asking her the same questions she'd asked since El Shoua was five, and she would storm off in a tantrum and slam the door to her room, fuming at herself for acting the little kid her aunt treated her like. Aunt Ellen had a magical ability to take one look at El Shoua and see everything she'd forgotten to do, or only done half, or was thinking of doing.

"She treats me like I'm twelve," fumed El Shoua to herself. "It's like I'm old enough to leave home but only if she calls the neighbors to check on me."

This wasn't true of course. Aunt Ellen had never left home without El Shoua and Grandpa in collection, and if she had left without one or the other, she would have trusted them so far as to only warn the neighbors to watch for something irregular. Grandpa did leave regularly, but Aunt Ellen and El Shoua rarely went him him, and Aunt Ellen never by herself. She didn't like to travel much -- she'd gotten that out of her system when she was younger, she said, and besides Grant City was three days away by train. There was nothing she wanted in Grant City that couldn't be got in Grant Town for half the price.

It did occur to El Shoua that Aunt Ellen only treated her as young as she responded, but this made her more persnickety and rebellious toward the injustice of being tied down to the family farmhouse and unable, as far as she could trace the horizon, to leave. To her chagrin, El Shoua had managed the unusual feat of growing older without growing up, finishing school at the local college and keeping the same room she'd had since she was five long after she'd thought she'd leave it empty.

El Shoua dutifully went into her bathroom and took a washcloth to her ears, inside and behind, because it didn't stand to reason that she should ignore good advice from her aunt. When she went downstairs, horribly aware that her ears were bright red and shiny, Aunt Ellen was putting breakfast on the table and the pipes were rattling noisily as Grandpa flushed the downstairs toilet. El Shoua didn't say anything as she opened Grandpa's paper at his spot and got cups from the cupboard.

Grandpa entered, still buttoning his pants and only wearing a white cotton t-shirt. Aunt Ellen rolled her lips tight to keep silent, and El Shoua rolled her eyes. The teapot hissed, and breakfast was ready. Aunt Ellen grabbed three bags of tea and put them into mugs. There weren't any tea leaves this year -- expenses were unusually high, and Aunt Ellen was in charge of the finances.

"This is your second cup this morning," she said as she poured water into Grandpa's mug.

"I needed the first to move my bowels."

"Big Mama got up every morning and drank a cup of hot water to move her bowels," said Aunt Ellen. "You couldn't do the same thing until the February harvest?"

"Big Mama raised three kids during the Depression, Elly. I was her fourth, and I'll have two cups of tea if I want to."

"Sometimes Big Mama had hot chocolate in the morning with me," said El Shoua.

Aunt Ellen shot her a look. Grandpa opened his newspaper and began reading, stirring his oatmeal to cool it and skipping the butter. El Shoua didn't take any butter either, but she put a little spoon of grape jam on her oatmeal and mixed it on. Aunt Ellen took an even smaller spoonful of jam and cut the barest hint of butter to complement.

"Work goin' well, Shoua?"

"Yes, ma'am. There's a new family moved into town, and they have three kids. Two in my class, the other in the infant room. It puts me one over the limit, but we can't hire anybody extra. Miss Michelle comes in to help out in the mornings, and Jamal is moving up to the five-year-old room next month, so I can handle it."

"You shouldn't have to do anything that's against the law."

El Shoua watched Aunt Ellen worry her teabag around in her cup. She liked it dark and bitter.

"We can't help it. It's only gonna be for a few weeks until Jamal moves up."

"What happens next time?" asked Grandpa from behind the paper. "Next time they can't help it, and if they get caught, you're the one without a job. You should tell them that it's dangerous for you to have that many children. It's not fair to you that you have more than the limit, and it's not worth your job to have more."

"It's not worth my job to complain. They can get rid of me and hire two new teachers cheaper than what I cost, as long as they're only aides, and give Miss Michelle my class. I can't afford to lose my job, Grandpa."

"I know," said Grandpa. "It just isn't fair."

El Shoua sighed into her oatmeal. The pipes creaked to break the silence, and Aunt Ellen scraped nearly the last of the oatmeal out of the pot into her her bowl, leaving a pitiful remainder to show her restraint.

"Any raids this week?" asked Aunt Ellen.

Grandpa thumbed through his paper. "Doesn't look like there's been one for four, five months now."

"Good."

El Shoua gave herself another helping of oatmeal and mixed it with what was left in her bowl from the first. Grandpa drank the swills of his tea and looked pained at the residue in his cup. He went back to his paper and scratched at his stubble with his pinky (Aunt Ellen winced and glanced at the corner cabinet).

"Col Ahmadi's boy been around lately?" asked Grandpa.

El Shoua cringed, but Aunt Ellen took up the topic happily.

"Not since harvest was over, Papa. Got one more year left in school. He can't take too many weekends off to visit us, you know." Aunt Ellen spooned herself a moderate second helping of jelly, rewarding herself for her less than generous first. "Col says he's real good in business. Gonna turn the place inside out next year when he becomes partner."

Spinster was an old-fashioned, unlikely term to be used, but sometimes El Shoua imagined herself stuck at home forever, like Aunt Ellen going back to Grandpa and the farm after she'd traveled in her youth. It was a more attractive alternative than Marl Ahmadi, who looked like he had pug in his genes with his flat face and round cheeks.

El Shoua pushed out from the table and took her bowl out to the back porch. Panya came flying out from underneath the wicker love seat and jumped on two legs to beg for breakfast. She waited until the bowl was placed on the floor before dropping to all fours and scuttling across the porch to eat.

"Stupid pig," said El Shoua to the dog. "You're such a fat ass."

El Shoua crossed to the wicker love seat and sat down next to a misplaced phone, reaching behind her with casual grace and shimmying out of hiding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Blocked from her aunt's view by a well-placed plastic fern, El Shoua took a cigarette and put the pack back behind the love seat. Sucking her stomach in, she shoved the cigarette and lighter down her pants next to her hip where the bone would stop her jeans from completely crushing the cigarette flat.

"Shoua," called out Aunt Ellen. "Don't forget to water the dog."

"I'm goin' now."

El Shoua walked carefully down the steps, mindful of her loose package, and went around to the side of the barn where the faucet was. Because of the drought, there was water rationing throughout the county, even in Grant City, but Grandpa had dug a well by the pond when the farm was still his father's unbroken homestead and Grandpa barely old enough to help his father in the dangerous work of well-digging. Without all the new technology available to them that they were accustomed to, they'd dug the well the old fashioned way -- with handheld shovels that left blisters and candles to warn them of gas pockets.

Generally, El Shoua filled the bowl once in the morning and once at night, trusting Panya to wander to the pond throughout the day to get a drink. But the drought had dried up the pond two years ago, and so El Shoua filled the dog's bowl three times a day with dusty well water. Before last year, she would have spent half the morning taking care of the basic needs of the livestock and helping Grandpa with the greenhouse; this year, she smoked a cigarette in the sharp, dry cold and watched the shadows shorten as the sun rose.

She finished her cigarette, stamped it out, and put the butt in her jean pocket. The lighter she would replace with the pack, the butt she would dispose of in town. El Shoua grabbed the pail, filled it with enough water for the dog, and walked back to the porch. At this time, she needed to be inside to wash her hands and get ready for work.

Full of joy and gratitude, Panya did her dance for the water, surprised that El Shoua had remembered such an insignificant creature such as herself and the triviality of water. Before entering the kitchen, El Shoua stood in the doorway, looking out the porch to the road that wound near the edge of their property. There was nothing there, but she couldn't help but strain her senses for something that she couldn't quite explain -- a sound or sight or perhaps only a smell, like dust brought up in clouds by rain miles away.

Panya whined mournfully at El Shoua's feet.

"Shut up, baby," she whispered. Panya quieted down, and El Shoua bent to pick her up, listening hard. Wasn't there something out there, something familiar that she could almost place? "Nothing. There's nothing," she said, and she turned the handle.

But it wasn't nothing. El Shoua froze, and she heard a whine in the distance that couldn't be blamed on a small white dog looking for attention, nor even the desired rain. It was a sound not often heard here in the backwater little county Grant Town resided, not even in Grant City. It was the whine of engines whittling wind, coughing clouds out grey and coarse.

"Grandpa," she called. "Aunt Ellen! There's a shuttle coming in! Real close. Better get on a phone and call Grant City. They're bound to be lost."

Aunt Ellen walked out on the porch, sniffing El Shoua with a dark eye and wiping her hands on a dish rag.

"Maybe it's a water tank."

"No," Grandpa said, folding his newspaper under his armpit as he stepped onto the back porch. "Too light for that, and too high."

"Too fast," said El Shoua. "Let's go round the other side of the house, see if we can see them."

Aunt Ellen waved aside the suggestion. "Y'all two go along. I've got to finish the dishes."

So with Panya at their heels, El Shoua and Grandpa walked around the outside of the house twice, looking at the sky for the source of the engines. Grandpa furrowed his brow deeper and deeper as their steps made a path in the dust.

"Can't see it," said El Shoua.

"It's up there high. It's engines are bigger than we thought if we can hear it."

"Maybe it's far away."

"Same thing, El Shoua. It's engines are big."

"Look," she said, pointing. "Look over there! I can see something. Can you?"

"Don't have my glasses," muttered Grandpa, patting his chest. "They're in my shirt pocket. Damn Elly, if it didn't piss her off so much, I'd get dressed in the morning."

"Can you see it now?"

Grandpa squinted along the line of sight El Shoua's pointing finger provided. The shuttle was getting closer quickly, louder and bigger as the seconds passed. She raced across the yard to the slough that was all that was left of the pond. The well and water tower were to her left, and a few miles further on their property, behind some trees and a thicket, was the lake that was now closer akin to what the pond had been. She stood at its edge, out of breath, and watched the east and the shuttle.

"Describe it, El Shoua," said Grandpa, suddenly behind her with his hands on her shoulders. He rubbed his knees and swore coarsely. "Damn aging," he said in the same way he'd damned Aunt Ellen. "Damn aging, damn knees, damn it to hell. El Shoua, tell me what you see."

"It's big," El Shoua said. "Not wide, like the shuttle that takes you to the capital. It's skinnier than that. Goes fast, too. It was over the hills two, three minutes ago, and now it's reaching the forest line. Guess it'll be here in about five minutes and rattle our windows, huh?"

"What color is it?"

"Why, I dunno." El Shoua cupped her hand around her eyes. "Black, maybe. Maybe blue? The sun's in my eyes. What do you think it is?"

Grandpa's hands tightened their grip, and she squirmed out from underneath them.

"Get Elly," he said. "Fast. You run fast and get Aunt Ellen."

"Grandpa, what are you talkin' about? Aunt Ellen don't wanna see this. We're too interested in it. Just let her be alone and miserable," said El Shoua. "She likes us to go without her. Makes her feel --"

"El Shoua, shut up and get your aunt," snapped Grandpa, which really hurt El Shoua's feelings, because Grandpa didn't often snap at her. He didn't apologize, just stood at the slough's edge, eyes on the shuttle. He reached down and picked up Panya. "And get a phone while you're at it. Your phone, my glasses, and Aunt Ellen. I want to ask her something, tell her it's important."

El Shoua took off toward the house, calling for Aunt Ellen and feeling like she was locked inside a silly game of Grandpa's invention. Maybe he's gone crazy, she told herself as she thudded over the porch floor. He's old enough, and Big Mama did, and that stuff's genetic, like eye color and curly hair. But she couldn't help feel as she opened the kitchen door, still thundering for her aunt, that there was something weird about the whole day, and something definitely weird about the shuttle that came so quickly and loudly over the sky. It sounded bigger than a shuttle and faster than a water tank and why was it so loud? Maybe it wasn't just lost -- maybe it was damaged and going to crash.

Aunt Ellen wasn't in the kitchen, and El Shoua ran into Grandpa's room for his glasses and to check if she were in there cleaning up (just one of her things; Grandpa wasn't a very messy person, only less neat that Aunt Ellen). She wasn't there either, so El Shoua ran up into the attic to get her phone. She tossed it and her lighter into her bag, figuring she could throw her cigarettes in it on the way out and maybe smoke one with Grandpa after Aunt Ellen had gone back inside.

"Aunt Ellen!" cried El Shoua again. "Grandpa wants you! Aunt Ellen!"

"Shoua, get out here," she heard Grandpa call. "Where's the phone?"

She only stopped to grab her cigarettes, still yelling Aunt Ellen's name in a half-hearted effort. Aunt Ellen was probably in the cellar with her preserves, sulking over not being included and contemplating the many ways in which she put herself out for her family and in which they rebuked, ridiculed, and renounced her attempts to mother them.

What a crybaby, El Shoua thought with fondness as she scooped up the phone she'd noticed earlier -- it was Grandpa's. She'll miss all the excitement. She couldn't wait to tell the kids in her class today all about her exciting morning. She checked the time on Grandpa's phone and winced -- she had less than an hour before school started.

"Aunt Ellen, we'll be by the pond. Grandpa wants to talk to you about the shuttle."

El Shoua made her way back to the pond in quick time and gasped. The shuttle had traveled further than she'd anticipated -- and she could see clearly now that it wasn't a shuttle, good for low orbit and limited atmospheric maneuvering.

"Grandpa, that's a ship," said El Shoua, everything suddenly clicking into place as years' worth of newspaper articles flashed through her mind. "Grandpa, that's not one of ours. Grandpa, where are you? Grandpa --"

"Get into the slough, girls," commanded Grandpa from some three feet ahead of her. "Get low and get into the slough. Don't mind the mud, just cover yourselves."

"Grandpa!" cried El Shoua. "Grandpa, is that a raider? Grandpa, Aunt Ellen's still inside!" El Shoua dropped her load and sprinted toward the house. It was a raider, always heard for miles before it could be seen, rarely with enough warning for people to get out of the buildings into their yards before the bombs were deployed and the barns destroyed. She wished that they had a deeper cellar, but theirs was useless if the house were hit. "Aunt Ellen! Aunt Ellen, there's a ship, and it's just like the papers, and we've got to go into the slough, Grandpa said! Aunt Ellen, please hurry!"

El Shoua banged into the kitchen and darted to the cellar door, but the light was off and there was nobody down there. She stormed through the dining room and front room, rattled through the front bathroom and Grandpa's room, dashed around the master suit where Aunt Ellen slept and bathed. Nobody there.

"She's outside," she said aloud, and she rushed out the front door, ignoring years of Aunt Ellen's warnings that to use that entry was certain death.

The roar of the engines was getting louder; the windows shook in their panes slightly. The ship was minutes away from a good visual. Going around the side of the house, she ran back to the slough where she saw a little black blob dancing around the reeds -- Panya, her pretty white hair covered in heavy mud, making her little round body skinny and lopsided where it was pasted flat. El Shoua saw movement in the reeds, and she thrashed toward it, throwing herself into a small hollow.

"Where is she?" asked Grandpa, covered head to toe in the same mud as Panya and smearing some on El Shoua's face.

El Shoua felt a chill go down her spine that had nothing to do with the winter-cold water she was half-doused in.

"She's not here?" she asked, her teeth chattering. "She wasn't in the house -- I thought maybe she was out here already. She's not here?"

"No, Shoua," said Grandpa. El Shoua scrambled to her feet, and he pulled her down roughly into the mud and water. Reeds cut her face and hands and got tangled in her hair. "You don't have time to get her! Don't worry, Shoua, she'll hear the ship, she'll go to the slough. She knows what to do."

"How can she?" asked El Shoua, struggling to make purchase against his hold. "I didn't know to go to the slough! She won't either."

"Shoua, she knows. She's been around. I can't get her myself, and y'all won't make it back in time. We have to wait here for her -- she'll make it. We have a few minutes. Just -- just call her name. And get muddy. We've got to at least try to mask our body heat. Get as muddy as you can, and call your dog in here or send her away. We don't need her giving us away."

"It's -- it's seven fifteen, seven thirty," said El Shoua. "She always goes to the west side of the barn to feed the hens. Grandpa, that's on the other side of the farm. She won't even hear us -- she couldn't have heard me in the house, and she could have her radio on, and she couldn't hear us even more, and she's already ignoring the ship, you know she was, and the barn will block it from view, she won't know it's a ship and not a shuttle --"

"Call her name, damn you!" cried Grandpa. "I can't do anything else to save her, I can't do anything but call her name. Elly! Ellen, it's a raider! Ellen, raider! Ellen, come here, you stubborn old woman, Elly!"

"Aunt Ellen!" called El Shoua, working her shoulders into the waters as she lay on her back. "Aunt Ellen!"

She was face down in the mud, water in her ears warping her grandfather's calls, when the ship went overhead. It fired as she flipped over onto her back, her hair standing on end, and she could hear Grandpa, no longer yelling, trying to quiet a frantic Panya. She reached out, leaning half up, and took the dog from Grandpa, and Panya burrowed her face into El Shoua's shoulder, shivering and growling.

"Elly," whispered Grandpa. "Flood the sty, get in with the pigs. He could miss you."

A second shot went off, charging the air around them with a rippling current of heat, and El Shoua moaned.

"Flood the sty, Ellen."

It was like an old and forgotten prayer, something half-learned in childhood before more important things had taken its place, and El Shoua found herself whispering with her grandfather the strange commandment. If only Aunt Ellen flooded the sty and wallowed with the pigs, maybe the raider would miss her heat signature and she'd escape. The raiders used crude explosives as their missiles, nothing sophisticated like an energy weapon that could sometimes double the danger of an attack. Their world was too far out, too small to waste big guns on. They got two, maybe three raids a year, surplus ammunition going toward a quick and dirty target practice for a Chintian fighter pilot.

"Flood the sty, Ellen," chanted El Shoua through chattering teeth, through the thunder and smoke the ship created. "Flood the sty" -- until she shook, but not from the ship but her grandfather. He was saying it all wrong, and Panya was squirming unhappily in El Shoua's arms, and if he didn't stop shaking her, she'd hit him.

"Go ahead, hit me," he said. "I'm gonna hit you first if you ain't careful."

He splashed freezing, dirty water on her face, and she sputtered, blinking bits of soft plant out of her eyes. She choked and took a deep breath, choked again.

"Grandpa?" she said. "Grandpa, are they gone?"

Grandpa laughed a clinking laugh, coughing a little, and motioned for her to help him up. She pushed herself up, surprised at how stiff she felt and how it prickled and hurt. Wiping her hands futilely on the knees of her pants, she reached down and helped Grandpa lumber to his feet. She could almost hear him creak and groan as he got out of the water and into a standing position.

"My old bones," he said. "They can't take it like yours can."

"Grandpa, where's Aunt Ellen?" asked El Shoua. Panya half ran, half swam around by their feet, sometimes caught by surprise as to which she was doing at the time. "Is it gone?"

"Raider's gone," said Grandpa, pointing. El Shoua looked to where he indicated and felt all the breath leave her body. The house -- the house was destroyed, only rubble and flames left. A few stone steps leading to where the porch should be looked almost white from the heat. "Chemical fire," said Grandpa. "Can you smell it? If they'd known about it, even the slough couldn't have saved us."

Horses screamed; if it had been a year ago, El Shoua would have already let them out into the pasture for the morning.

"Grandpa, Aunt Ellen," said El Shoua urgently, looking past the burning house and down to where the barn stood. It too was in flames, and the chicken coup, and the grain silo, and the wooden supports of the water tower, too, steaming and hissing and beginning to show places of strain where the metal was melting away from the heat of the fire and the water was pushing out. "When that bursts, it'll spread the fire everywhere. Metal, too. We have to get to Aunt Ellen."

"I found her," said Grandpa, bending down and picking up her bag and the other things she'd dropped earlier. He handed them to her, and she put everything in the back, then slung it over her shoulder automatically. It felt strange to wear it next to her damp clothes. "Over there --" he pointed to the west, where the chicken coop was. "Found her about five minutes ago. Came back to wake you up."

"Wake me up?" asked El Shoua, confused and scared. "Grandpa, we have to move her. She's not safe."

"No, El Shoua, no, girl. There's nothing to do but get ourselves away from here. You're right about that water tower -- we got to make it to the lake. Forget the animals, they're dead even if we could get close enough to the barn to free the poor things. We gotta make it past the trees and to the lake. If the trees go up before we can go through them, we're cut off for who knows how long. Don't wanna be in a burning forest."

"But Aunt Ellen --"

"Is dead, Shoua! And we can't take her with us." Grandpa grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her so hard she felt like he'd pulled her socket out of her shoulder. "We've got to get past the trees! The farm is surrounded by the trees, Shoua, we'll be trapped. Damn it to hell, these trees! Damn fool place to put a farm, always got stumps to get out of the ground and always got beast in the forest running off with your livestock. And now we got damn raiders think this is a great place to do a little damage."

They were halfway to the tree line now, Panya yapping maniacally at their feet. El Shoua twisted her body as she stumbled along with Grandpa half-pulled, glancing at the growing flames at the farm.

"I'm scared," she said. "What if we don't make it to the sty?"

"Damn it, Shoua, damn the sty," said Grandpa, panting and holding a stick in his side with his free hand. "Stop crying! We're gonna die if you don't help me -- I can't make it on my own, I can't carry you, do you understand? I don't know if I can make it at all, but you can. You got the knees for running, you can get through the forest. Just help me, and I'll come with you. We got to get out of those trees, girl!"

Shoua yanked her hand out of his and pulled herself up straighter. Through the smoky air, she found the meaning of his words and understood his haste better. This was a life and death situation. She couldn't bow down to fear and let it take it, even if the water tower was going to explode and the horses were screaming and Aunt Ellen was probably roasting like the pigs in the sty that wasn't flooded.

"We're gonna make it," she said. She drew up next to him and threw his arm around her shoulders. "Lean on me, we can make it together."

Feeling like she was in the most important three-legged race of all time, El Shoua laboriously made her way toward the wood. It came closer and closer until they were in the thickets. There weren't many well-worn paths here, and she improvised the quickest route through them, feeling thorns tear at her skin and clothing. Grandpa was breathing heavily and leaning harder on her, and the smoke had followed them like an assassin. They reached the trees and stopped a few moments to catch their breath. Her bag was still on her shoulder, thorns sticking out where they'd snagged and stuck in the thick leather.

By luck, the trees were thin and scraggly by the way to the lake, only a few decades old and wild-grown. It had been clear land when Big Papa had first settled there, cleared of saplings in the spring and kept open for transportation. But the road had been built on the other side of the lake, out of the way of the farm, and the trees had grown up since Grandpa was a young man. They were older than El Shoua, but not so big as the true forest.

"This is ... easy," panted Grandpa as they began again. "We'll reach the lake ... and we'll swim ... to the road. When the water tower ... explodes ... you dive. Understand?"

"Yes, Grandpa." El Shoua didn't ask what they'd do if the water tower exploded before they'd reached the lake.

Together, they entered the woods, knowing that within minutes they'd reach the clearing on the other side that was as yet unseen to them. Behind them, the farm gave off ominous crackling sounds, and something thundered down to the earth and rose and mighty cloud of dust that seemed to race to them in blazing, like it itself was on fire. El Shoua felt dirty, like everything that was in the air and everything she was pushing through in the woods were sticking to the half-dried mud that was caked on her already. The burnt earth was just icing on the cake.

She looked over at Grandpa and saw where beads of blood were formed on his face and arms, and where they'd broken and formed small red rivers and beaded again. His blood didn't clot very well -- some medication he was on to help with his bad cholesterol. It wasn't dangerous with so many small scratches, but El Shoua slowed for a moment and twisted so she could smear mud over his left arm where it was worst because he used it to push away brush before them.

For a moment after resuming full pace, El Shoua thought they'd gotten lost and turned around in the woods. It couldn't take this long to actually reach the other side of this small strip of trees, could it? There was nothing familiar to her, and besides the air was filled with a sharp tasting black smoke that burned her eyes and stung her lungs. She had to rely on her gut that said that she'd been going more or less in a straight line through the woods. It was hard to trust herself when she was so scared.

Even Panya had stopped yipping as they ran through the wood, probably as tired and confused as El Shoua herself, maybe more so. Finally, Grandpa panted out something she wasn't able to understand, and El Shoua sharpened her eyes until she noticed the patch of blue in the trees. They were nearing the end of the woods, and from there it was only a quarter of a mile away to the lake. Finding an extra spurt of speed and strength within herself that she hadn't known she possessed, El Shoua pushed them forward the last few feet until they broke free from the trees and the imminent danger of being cook like beef in the wood cage.

"We're out, Grandpa!" cried El Shoua, stumbling and falling to her knees. Grandpa was pulled down with her, but he pushed hard against the ground and made it in two half-steps to his feet again. El Shoua fell forward on her face and breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath and coming up with a mouthful of dirt. She was kicked, not unkindly but still roughly, in her side. "Grandpa, we can't make it all the way to lake without resting."

"Damn it, girl, we can't stay so close to the trees. We need to get to the water!"

El Shoua turned on her back, then pushed herself up with her elbows. The lake was six or seven minutes away if they walked, maybe half that if they ran. It had already taken them nearly fifteen minutes to get here -- an impressive feat for three miles, considering a good third of that was wood and brambles and she'd had to help Grandpa along. She wasn't sure how they'd made it to this side of the wood, and she really wasn't sure if she could make it to the lake without stopping.

"It's so close. We're safe. We can make it."

"If we're so close, it should be easy," said Grandpa, already limping toward the lake in a crooked path. El Shoua could tell that his knees were troubling him greatly. "The water tower hasn't gone yet, and I can't help feeling that every minute longer it stays intact, that's that much more steam to burn those chemicals onto our skin and clothing. I don't look pretty as a burn victim, El Shoua, and I don't think you'd like what it did to your hair."

"Damn it," said El Shoua, but she got up and raced to his side, pulling him half-on her again and pushing the pace as fast as either could handle. She felt guilty for stopping and staying in the dirt when Grandpa had pushed on -- Grandpa was older than she was, older and ill and full of aches and pains that meant every other step in a normal day was worth wincing at. If he could go on, she would, too, because she was fit and healthy and had no reason to slow down.

They made it in five minutes -- the drought had dropped the water level in the lake a good eighty, ninety feet, and only its incredible depths and the underground springs that fed it kept the lake from fully drying up. Once they entered the thick, sloppy silt where wildflowers grew in good fortune, El Shoua slowed them both down. Past the furthest edges of the lake bed where the sun had effectively dried the dirt, it was difficult making their way through knee-deep mulch; every step made a squelching sound and pulled them down. She couldn't wade through this like she had the slough, so they sludged through, their eyes on the body of the lake.

"We made it," said Grandpa as they started squishing along the shore. It was his turn to sink, clumsily, to the ground. "Can't swim when I'm this tired -- might cramp up and drown. Might panic and breath in water once I dove."

El Shoua sank down next to him gratefully. The muddy water was more cold here than even it had been in the freezing slough, probably due to the springs which fed the lake. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, and the swishing pulse of it blocked out most of the world around her. Slowly her vision widened, black spots shrinking and moving about, until she realized that she'd had tunnel vision. Her face was hot and flushed, and her forearms cold. El Shoua unclenched her fists, tried to breath rhythmically.

"Panya?" she called, and a bedraggled spot of black mud wearily made its way to her, short legs half-swimming in the four or so inches of water where she sat. She pulled the dog up into her lap, and Panya shivered and shook throughout her whole body. The poor thing had her tongue out, long and pointed like a hummingbird's unfurled, and was panting. Around El Shoua, the sounds began returning.

She couldn't hear the livestock anymore, but she supposed that they were all dead by now. If any had survived -- perhaps some fowls, maybe some damned pigs -- if any survived, they would be in the woods now, making their way away from the holocaust that was the farm. If they were smart, El Shoua might begin to see them wander in to the lake's edge from the narrow wood. If they were lucky, they'd be far enough away by the time the fire reached the forest to stay ahead of it.

What she could hear was the fire, and it sounded closer than before. El Shoua drew her eye along the horizon of the wood to where the forest was closest to the farm buildings and shuddered. She could see flames in the trees, which meant that the fire had leapt from the grain silo to the greenhouse and, finally, to the forest. It wouldn't be long now before the entire forest was ablaze. They had to get to town -- the fire was big enough to warn them even if the raider had circumvented Grant Town and passed detection, but they had to get to town and let them know that they, at least, were alive.

And Aunt Ellen isn't, thought El Shoua with a blank horror. It seemed impossible that Aunt Ellen wouldn't come marching out of the smoking tree line right up to El Shoua and Grandpa and demand to know if they had got their ears cleaned of mud and grime while they sat lolly gagging on the lake shore. It was surreal to think that there was really something in the world that could be taken away from her forever. Death was something for animals, not people she loved and had known for as long as she could place a memory. Aunt Ellen had taken her in, fed her and clothed her and bathed her and loved her, and even if she liked to pretend that her feelings were always being injured, El Shoua knew that her aunt had felt the love that she and Grandpa had given her, day in and day out, all their lives together.

It was like reaching the end of a good book and knowing that the author was gone and couldn't write any more. The world was ended, to be tucked away in some place of her memory and revisited only when something new wasn't taking up the here and now of the moment. But Aunt Ellen had been real, more real than some imagined history. Aunt Ellen was real, and the fact that she was finished so brutally was impossible to believe.

"Where's your phone?" asked Grandpa, and El Shoua shook herself out of her thoughts.

She moved the dog to one side and slung the purse off her shoulder and into her lap. She'd have to leave it on the shore -- it was oiled leather, but if she dove, it would ruin everything inside. She pulled out her phone and Grandpa's, and then El Shoua grabbed the cigarettes and her lighter. She lit one and handed it to Grandpa with his phone, then lit herself one. She puffed rapidly to begin a good burn as she stared at her phone display. It was seven-fifty-two, less than an hour since she'd last talked to Aunt Ellen.

It was too much. El Shoua dropped the phone in her lap and put her hands, one still holding a cigarette, to her eyes. The mud on her face stung as she began to cry, weird little sounds like she was pushing the tears up from the bottom of her toes. She couldn't breathe, only let go. It was too much, too much, and Aunt Ellen was gone, and the farm was in flames, and their crop was baked with the livestock like a summer barbecue. Grandpa was shaking her, telling her to smoke her cigarette, and El Shoua put it to her lips without thinking and inhaled too deeply, choking a little on the smoke and taking another hit to help her breathe again.

"Gotta call the town," she said around her cigarette, fumbling in her lap for the phone.

"Can't. There's no town left."

El Shoua turned in horror to the view that had been her skyline for as long as she could think of ever leaving the farm. Instead of the squat line of buildings and the barely perceptible backdrop of the suburbs, she saw a smear of smoke float lazily up into the sky. Not one end of the town was visible -- either the raider had scorched the entire place, or the fires had spread, or what was burning was so hot and thick that the smoke had enveloped the whole world. In any case, the town was gone, disappeared, and what people were there left had to be in the same situation as themselves.

With an anger burning as hot as the fires, El Shoua stood up, her purse swinging to her side and Panya sliding off her lap. She raised the first clutching her phone and shook it at the dirty skyline.

"This isn't a RAID," she screamed. "This is a massacre! There are babies there! A massacre isn't fair, you damn ugly beasts. You're supposed to shoot up a few barns and round up the livestock and run off and cause panic and not kill people like animals. This isn't in the papers! Y'all aren't doing it right, you damn Chintis!"

Grandpa dropped the butt of his cigarette into the water where it sizzled a moment in death.

"Raid seems to be misnomer," he said. "Haven't read anything like this in the papers -- entire towns in fire. But maybe the conflict's just been taken up a notch. Maybe we're back to a full shooting war, not the hit and runs we give each other."

"Why? Why? Grant Planet is small! We don't even have our own congressmen!"

The injustice of being a small colony in a collection of small colonies sat heavily on El Shoua's shoulders. Even if Congress brought up the destruction of Grant Town, it was a small city in a small county that housed the capitol of a small planet. There was probably only one man in all of Congress who knew or cared about the planet. The anger aroused in her was choking and mournful. She felt like a small tile in a mosaic that was already half-covered by something larger, flashier, more important to the greater picture. Nobody would step forward to view the myriad pieces of her life.

"We got to call Grant City." Grandpa motioned at her with his large, powerful hands, his fingers curled into thick claws. "Can't do it myself. Can't work the buttons on this infernal contraption. You gotta do it, Shoua. You got a number in there?"

She did. El Shoua sat down again into the icy water, Panya leaping into her laps almost before she'd settled. She opened her contacts and scrolled down the list until she came across the entry she wanted: m a - idiot. She only hoped that Marl Ahmadi was awake and not in class already for the morning. She pressed the send button and brought the phone up to her ear.

It buzzed for a few moments until a woman's voice came on the line.

"We're sorry. Service is temporarily unavailable in this area. Please hang up and try your call again."

"It's busy," she said.

"I got Col's number," said Grandpa, who obviously knew whom she'd dialed. El Shoua didn't know anyone else in Grant City.

"No -- I mean, the system is busy. Not Marl's line. It's overloaded." El Shoua hung up and pressed the send button again, but the same automated response rang through her ears. "I can't reach him!"

"Calm down, child," scolded Grandpa, sounding like he was in the greenhouse with her and she'd done her chores in such haste that she'd missed an entire row of plants. "That's a good thing. It means other people are trying to get through to Grant City. We're not the only ones! Somebody's bound to have gotten through already."

"Yeah," said El Shoua. "Yeah."

A rumble and a creak made them both jump. It sounded horribly like metal twisting and burning, a water tower getting ready to explode. They'd sat and rested for well over five minutes -- they needed to get in the water and ride out the explosion. El Shoua wasn't certain how deep she wanted to dive for safety, but she knew it was well beyond three feet of depth offered by the lake in the first thirty feet out. She took off her purse and pulled back her arm to throw it into the dryer mud before stopping and digging through it.

She took out her wallet and pulled out some cash, her bank card, and her identity card. She might not get a chance to come back for the purse, and they would be useful. El Shoua paused when she saw a small plastic insert containing printed pictures of her family -- the only pictures she had left of Aunt Ellen and Grandpa. Her computer at home was destroyed, and the nursery school's along with it. But they wouldn't survive the swim, and she folded the wallet back up.

Deeper down inside her purse she found a few memory sticks, probably containing her lesson plans and a more photos. She was glad, and El Shoua promised herself she'd make it back for her purse. Within an inside pocket, she came across a real goldmine -- a large plastic bag, sealed tight and rolled up with half a dozen peanut butter crackers inside. She unzipped it and handed half the crackers to Grandpa, shoving the rest in her mouth. Emptying the crumbs into her hand, she let Panya lick it clean, then threw her phone, cigarettes and lighter, and her cards and cash inside. If she was lucky, the bag would be watertight enough to save her phone. If she wasn't, the cards and the money would still be okay, and the phone and cigarettes weren't irreplaceable. She held it out to Grandpa, and he dropped his own phone inside.

Carefully, she sealed it shut, running her fingers tightly over it three or four times for extra insurance before folding it over a few times. It wasn't much, but it was something. She sucked in her gut and shoved the bag down the front of her pants, hoping that she wouldn't lose it all in the lake. Grandpa was already standing with Panya in his arms. That was a good idea. The dog might not follow them into the water, as sick of all the trials they'd already put her through and as disgusted with them as she clearly already was.

El Shoua walked a few feet till she found a suitable spot and buried her purse. She would know where to find it later; she knew the shores of this lake like the palm of her hand, even if it was all cut up and bloody from pushing through the brush as this moment.

"Ready?"

El Shoua nodded. She grabbed his hands, just like she had when she was a little girl with him in Grant Town and the people of the crowd had been so overwhelming to her, and together they began wading out into the lake. The water seemed to get colder the further out they got, and the mud thicker and slimier. She worried about snakes and other animals in the lake and was thankful that she was wearing her thick winter boots -- not very fashionable, but warm against the cold. She hoped they wouldn't bog her down so much so that she had to kick them off.

The water was at El Shoua's chest before Grandpa put down the dog in the water. Letting go of her hand, he bent forward and began walking in earnest. She was already treading water behind him, feeling bogged down with fatigue and her heavy winter clothes. The wind was picking up, and, terribly, was pushing from the farm, a dangerous combination of cold and hot.

"What happens when it blows?" asked El Shoua. It had to be just past eight in the morning now, and the water tower's wooden frame had been falling victim to the flames for thirty minutes.

"We dive, we stay down as long as possible. We don't want to be burned by any falling residue. Hopefully, it won't be too concentrated -- most of the chemical they used should be burned out if we're lucky. But there's gonna be spots on the water that burn."

"What?"

"Oil and water don't mix, girl, you know that. There's gonna be spots where the chemical falls on the water and burns, and you gotta remember to stay away from those when you surface. Try to keep under water for as long as possible, be real careful coming up. If you see a safe spot to swim through, go. But if there's any doubt, any at all, you dive, understand me? I don't know what they're using, Shoua."

"This is very dangerous," she said inanely. Grandpa laughed.

She was swimming full out now, and Grandpa was, too. Beside them, Panya was paddling with determination and the air of great superiority to them both. This is the stupidest thing we've ever done, her reproachful eyes seemed to be saying, but I'm sure y'all know something I don't. They were nowhere near the middle of the lake, but they were over a deep area, so deep that when El Shoua looked down she couldn't see the bottom, and there weren't any plants brushing at her arms and feet as she swam.

It wasn't that she heard it before she saw it but that El Shoua felt the change in the air as it happened. She didn't have time to cry out a warning before Grandpa was yelling at her to dive, dive, dive, and El Shoua dove, some strange instinct causing her to grab the dog before she went down. She'd not taken a big enough gulp of air, and panic threatened to overwhelm her as she held on to her struggling dog. She went three, four feet down until she couldn't tell what was up or sideways anymore. She glanced around frantically, hoping for some sign to tell her where she was at in these murky waters. Unable to discern anything, not even Grandpa, she let go of the dog and clawed at the water around her.

Panya was as panicked as she was, and she took off like a shot in a straight line. Trusting the dog to find the surface, El Shoua swam after her. Seconds later she realized with relief that her guess had been right -- Panya was headed toward the surface of the water. There were black splotches all around, huge and shiny, blocking out the light while at the same time casting some of their own. She caught up to Panya through some divine intervention and grabbed the dog again, who struggled with true fear for her fuzzy white life. El Shoua swam, lungs bursting, looking for a clear spot on the surface of the water.

A dark smudge at the corner of her vision caused her to turn her head, and she saw Grandpa making his way toward her. She reached him, almost spent, and decided that there was no larger spot than any she had seen before. She had to get to the surface now and get some air, or she was going to drown in this lake. The thought was not appetizing no matter how thick the irony of the situation was. She kicked strongly, trying not to let her panic overwhelm her, and went to a splotch of light about four feet, maybe five, wide.

Breaking the surface, she sucked in a large gulp of air and coughed it out. The smoke was thick and hazy all around her, and it tasted bitter. It burned her throat like a bucketful of bleach and stung at her eyes until all she could do was blink and blink and blink at the tears. Beside her, Grandpa was only a head on the surface of the water, and Panya was whining and sneezing out water in El Shoua's arms. She squeezed the dog for comfort and turned to her grandfather.

"Do you see any way through?"

"No," he said. "We're gonna have to go down again. We don't need to go so deep this time, and if we find a spot while we're up here, we'll got some place to swim to."

El Shoua cast her gaze along the water's edge, but the fire burning around her only feet away was hot and uncomfortable. It was inching closer and the chemical spread over the water, and if they didn't get down soon, they would burn to a crisp -- or worse, be trapped under the water looking for a clear spot so long that they drowned. It was difficult watching through the haze and dancing air that the heat made, but El Shoua thought she saw something further out: a clear spot without flames, large enough for them to swim above the surface for a good while. It was beyond the blast zone, but the chemicals were spreading fast and El Shoua wasn't sure if they'd be able to outrun the fire.

"Over there," she said, pointing. "We swim to the bank, no matter what." Grandpa nodded, took a big gulp of air, and dove. El Shoua hoped it wasn't a mirage that she saw.

She dove for the second time, trying to hold the squirming dog over the water as long as possible so that Panya would catch on to what was happening and get a large enough breath of air. She went down three feet, maybe more, and kicked off in the direction where she had pointed before letting go of Panya and outstripping her. If the dog was worth her salt, she would follow El Shoua. If she wasn't, she wasn't, but she still might manage to make it out of the lake alive.

She couldn't see even a glimmer of the blank expanse under here that she'd spied on the surface, and El Shoua began to worry that it really had been a trick of the flames that had sent them in that direction. If it was a fool's errand -- but, no, no matter what, that was away from the farm, and so beyond where the blast had been able to reach. Even if she hadn't seen the clear area, it was still her best hope.

Wherever it was, it was still further away than El Shoua was able to make it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Panya begin a slanted ascent toward the surface and, lungs screaming, El Shoua followed her, trusting that Panya would surface in an area large enough for both of them to get a little air before going under again.

Her faith was not misplaced, barely. Panya led her to an area just big enough for El Shoua to come up without the hair on her hair burning off immediately, but she could smell it roasting even as waterlogged as it was. She gasped for breath, grabbed the dog, and took another huge lungful before pulling them both under again, swimming as straight toward the opposite shore as she could. She hadn't seen Grandpa since he'd dived, and she was beginning to worry.

They surfaced twice more before El Shoua and Panya reached it -- the wonderful open expanse of water where only small spots were flaming. Behind them, the lake looked almost entirely ablaze, and as it crept toward them it felt like she was on a ship slowly approaching a shoreline. El Shoua could tell that she was more already more than halfway across the lake; it wasn't that far to dry land. She hesitated a moment, scanning the surface for her grandfather, but the smoke was thick and the water choppy, making it difficult for her to see. She was putting herself in more danger by staying here than by making her way to the bank.

"It's what we said," she told Panya as she started a course toward the bank, mindful of the small pockets of flames that littered the water. "We have to get to the other side."

The morning was beginning to wear on El Shoua as she swam for the shore. It had looked so close before she struck out, but now her destination proved far away. As she struggled closer, the dog paddling bravely and stoically beside her, El Shoua began to doubt her ability to reach the shore before she drowned from exhaustion or was overtaken by the creeping line of fire. She was so tired and had already done so much this morning. If she didn't make it to shore, though, it would all be for nothing, and the drought and its effects had brought out in El Shoua something similar to her Aunt Ellen's -- she hated wasting anything.

If I don't make it, El Shoua told herself, it's because of thoughts like these. I'm weighing myself down heavier than anything I could carry right now. She had to think in terms of not if but when she made it to the shore. When she made it to the shore, she promised herself, she would lie down on its banks and stretch out. Grandpa would be there waiting for her, or maybe just behind her, and they would cry together and call the city. The call would get through and --

Her foot struck something. The lake bottom was closer here; El Shoua was swimming through the reeds and boulders that lined the bottom. She checked her distance and realized that she'd swum farther than she thought. The shore was just before her, only a few feet away, and soon her feet would find muddy purchase, and she could rest her weary arms. The thought spurred her along stronger, and even Panya sensed her renewed determination and started paddling madly for the shore. The poor dog was probably stunned at her good luck, finding the end of the journey in the crazy race.

She made it to the shallow bank to a point where she could stand chest deep in water. She struggled to walk forward but found it was easier to half-swim until the depth was less. Finally, the water at her knees, she ran out of it and into the squelching mud of the receded shoreline. The grainy beach was still feet ahead of her, but El Shoua didn't care. She sank down into the mud in a spot where she didn't fear passing out and drowning, and she didn't move for several minutes.

A persistent tongue in her ear brought El Shoua to her sense; Panya was licking her, whining and stamping her feet in the mud, an action which caused her to sink down a few inches before she pulled herself free each time. El Shoua reached up and scratched the dog's ears. Panya barked two or three times and then darted away. She dashed back into view, barked again, and raced out of sight once more. El Shoua groaned and slowly pushed herself to her knees.

Somebody else groaned. El Shoua's heart stopped.

"Grandpa!" she cried out, rushing toward where Panya had disappeared.

In a small hollow she saw a figure flat on its back: her grandfather, barely conscious, was thrashing in a several inches of water. He hadn't had the strength to make it further, and El Shoua wondered in a rush of guilt if he had stayed in the water to look for her. If he was injured because of her --! She didn't finish that thought but rushed to his side. He was muttering something that she couldn't understand, just bits and pieces of words and half syllables.

In some part of her, El Shoua knew that she was at least a hundred pounds lighter than her grandfather, but even that part of her joined forces with whatever made her grab Grandpa by his armpits and lift him up slowly. Straining, and with Panya dancing in circles at her heels, El Shoua pulled Grandpa a few heavy inches. She didn't dare stop, not this early, and she took another step back, and then another, and then another. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she managed to drag him out of the swampy shore and onto some hard caked mud even further back than she'd been previously.

El Shoua dropped him and winced as he gave a grunting moan. She was too tired to apologize to him, especially if he were passed out, and she sat down next to him and slumped over his form, her eyes closed. Something irritated her stomach, though, and she couldn't get comfortable. Sitting up, she looked down and remembered that she put the plastic bag down the front of her pants. Miraculously, it was still there. El Shoua sucked in her gut and pulled it out. Her jeans clung uncomfortably to her skin, and she realized how cold she was.

With slow and deliberate care made difficult by her frozen fingers, El Shoua unfurled the plastic bag. Water came gushing out, and she groaned. Her phone would be useless, and she didn't know if her purse would survive the fire, even buried in the bog. But after she flattened the bag, her heart gave a leap of joy when she realized that inside it was dry. It had remained sealed throughout her swim.

El Shoua unlocked the bag with some difficulty and with thick fingers reached in to grab the phone. She was damp all over, but there wasn't a dry spot around to wipe her hands except on themselves, and she didn't care about the phone only so far as to get it working and get a call into Grant City or one of the other farms that surrounded Grant Town. Somebody somewhere had to have escaped the raid. The ship couldn't have gotten every farm out there, and even if the fire threatened to overwhelm their farms as it ate through the forest, as least they would be alive and searching for survivors, just like she was.

She hit the send button twice and put the phone up to her ear. Relief washed over her as she heard the phone ring. She'd gotten through! When Marl answered, she almost started crying. She had never thought that she would be so glad to hear his voice in her life, but right now he was important to her beyond anything else. He was her connection to the outside world, a savior in this hell.

"Hello?"

"Marl," said El Shoua, and her voice broke in chunks, soar from screaming and running and smoke and chemicals. "Marl, I need you. There's been a raid."

"El Shoua? Oh thank God." Marl sounded like he was crying, too, or at least interrupted in the middle of one. "I know -- it's been all over the news. I just saw your farm, I think. The forest is on fire, the lake, too, they identified it on screen. Where are you, El Shoua? The whole town is on fire!"

"I'm -- I'm at the lake."

"At the -- oh my God. Is everybody okay? Dad's calling the police right now, okay?" There was a muffled static on the other end that made El Shoua afraid the line had dropped for a moment, but then she heard Marl tell his father where they were at and heard Col Ahmadi's deep tones reply something indistinguishable. "They're gonna come get you, okay?"

"Yeah," said El Shoua. "Grandpa's passed out, but he's just tired. We had to race the fire across. We had to leave the farm. I'm sleepy, too."

"Is Ellen okay?"

"No. She died. She died at the farm, and we have to leave her. It was too hot."

"Damn. God, I'm so sorry, Shoua."

"Yeah. Me too. I wasn't thinking very nice thoughts. I didn't get her. I thought it was a water tank, and I left her."

"Not your fault," said Grandpa, lying on his side and propped up by his elbows. He was awake, and the color was coming back into his face.

Whatever Marl said to comfort El Shoua went unheard as she dropped the phone and leaned over to give her grandfather a crushing hug. "Oh Grandpa, Grandpa, I thought you'd died, and it was all my fault. I thought I killed y'all two. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Grandpa, for everything. I'm sorry I didn't get Aunt Ellen. It's my fault she died, I could have went back and got her. You saw how we made it, I could have got her before the raider came. It was in me!"

"Hush, girl." Grandpa petted the back of her head and spoke soothingly. "You couldn't have got her. Even if you had, the raider would have seen you and doused the pond. We'd all be dead. What happened happened, we can't change the past."


	2. Chapter 2

If anyone had asked El Shoua what she had done in the three days after the Grant Town raid, she wouldn't have been able to tell him. As far as she knew, she had fallen asleep on the shores of the burning lake and woken in the lunch line of the refugee camp in Grant City laughing at something Grandpa said. It wasn't like she had blacked out for those days, walking around like the undead. She just never thought of them, or during them. Her mind was fixed back at the farm, at the fire and the sound of the ship, and there wasn't enough space left in her head to remember anything else.

But laughing -- laughing. El Shoua didn't know that she hadn't thought she'd ever laugh again until she was laughing. It was so unreal that she stopped, if only for just a minute, revisiting her memories of the past and made a new one. The first time she laughed after the raid, and it was like waking up in the middle of the night, confusing but familiar. No dog, no cigarettes, no phone or Aunt Ellen, but her Grandpa was there and always close by. The laughter was good, and afterwards, El Shoua knew she'd be okay. There weren't any signs telling her this; it was something she decided.

Life after the raid very soon turned into its own sort of routine much like life before; in the mornings, El Shoua woke up and rolled her blanket into a tight bundled, then stuffed them into her pillowcase with her pillow. Sadly, there was more than enough room for the blanket to fit in there, and El Shoua took to keeping the pillowcase with her. She toyed with the idea of keeping what personal belongings she had with her inside the pillowcase as well, but she worried too much about everything getting stolen. It was incomprehensible to her that she should be without her ID and bank cards, and so she kept them, along with the little roll of cash, in her bra, the one article of clothing she never removed.

The refugee camp was hastily erected in the aftermath of the raid. In fact, it was still being built in most areas. Only one building was available right now -- the cafeteria, which doubled as a bunkhouse at night when blankets and pillows were passed out and the tables folded up and pushed outside. There was a large, fenced in courtyard, the southwestern half with a patio and overhang, where most of them spent the daylight hours, glad to be out of the common room. No plumbing was available, and El Shoua and the rest were resigned to a small portable outhouse that stank up the whole camp. There were no showers, but once a week a set of screens were erected in the corner of the patio, and they took turns bathing, half-dressed and with whatever rags could be found to scrub the dirt and grim off their bodies.

Construction was constant, an unceasing drilling in the ground and their heads day and night as promised larger buildings were put up. The buildings were much, much bigger than the pine stud and drywall structure they had now. It wasn't insulated, and sometimes at night El Shoua could hear the wind whistling sharply through thin cracks where the drywall did not meet completely. She and Grandpa stayed close together in the night for warmth, their stiff, city-issued pyjamas crackling over their smelly clothes.

By far the best times of the day were meal times. El Shoua and Grandpa would walk the line of carts set up, holding their round plastic plates out for helpings at every station, and find themselves a quiet area in the overcrowded room to eat. Generally, they sat with their faces turned sideways to the open doorway, and the cold wind blew in and made El Shoua's ears tingle.

"Everybody thinks that they can do it all, you know?" El Shoua shoveled some potatoes into her mouth. "If y'all'd asked me last week, could I swim across the lake if it was on fire? Yeah, yeah, because it's a life and death situation, you know? But while I was doing it, I didn't think I'd make it. Not even when I could see the other end of the lake, maybe not even when I was wading to the shore. I could have fallen any time. I could have drowned. I didn't think I could do it. It was more than I thought it'd be. And that's life -- everything's more than you thought it'd be. There're so many things you think will never happen or you think you can do, but suddenly it's happened, and you can't do anything."

Grandpa didn't answer. El Shoua frowned a little bit and wondered if what she was saying was something that everybody said when they reached her age. "I'm an adult!" they'd cry to the world, and then in the next year, two years, five years, they'd have another epiphany and find out that they weren't as grown up when they'd said those words as they thought they were. But it wasn't like everybody went through what she did nowadays, was it?

"I guess I sound pretty silly."

"Well," said Grandpa, "the war's been over for a generation. Y'all have nothing to grow up on. This was -- this was just a jumping off point."

"I'm not --"

"And I ain't saying that you're not right. I'm just saying that what you experienced used to be a lot more common than anybody wants to tell you. Used to be, you served your time in the military right out of school, and when you came back you were all grown up. But Shoua, it's a wrong kind of grown up. I watched your Aunt Ellen when she came home, and it was like it broke her."

El Shoua perked her ears, feeling the monotony of her days drip away until, three weeks later, she would realize that she couldn't remember them. She had known, or maybe assumed, that Grandpa had enlisted back at the beginnings of the war, when it seemed like a sure bet that they'd whip the Chintis into shape and come home for Christmas. He was old, just older than history, and everybody his age had been involved in the war in some form, man or woman.

"Aunt Ellen served?"

"Yep." Grandpa wiped his mouth with a napkin and crumpled it up on his plate. "In the last conflict before the end of the war. Went into service a little girl, younger than you, and she came home, oh, a year and a half later? Still younger than you, but maybe more grown up, even with what happened. It was a terrible, terrible ending to a terrible, terrible war, El Shoua. Ellen didn't talk about it, but she saw horrors. She saw them every day, and I know."

"I -- I didn't," said El Shoua. "I didn't know at all. She never said."

"Well, why talk about it? It's not a good time, El Shoua, and not a very patriotic time."

Grandpa started coughing, and El Shoua reached across the table to the dispenser and got him a paper napkin.

The other refugees watched without moving as she walked to his side of the table and thumped him soundly on the back several times. They were mostly young people like herself, some older men and women, and very few young children. People who with the luck to be on the outskirts of town enjoying the morning, more than half of them the senior class out on a school excursion. El Shoua didn't know anybody very well -- the teenagers were five or six years younger than she was, the littlest children too old to be in her class at school. Even the older people were mostly those who'd settled in Grant Town just a few years earlier to enjoy a faux-country way of life in the best suburb they could afford, and she had had little chance to interact with them before the raid.

The phlegm was dark brown on the beige paper napkin. El Shoua worried that he was coughing up blood, but Grandpa was all assurances that he wasn't, he'd know if he were, and she had to trust him. He wasn't the only one with a cough in the refugee camp, but nobody was gravely ill or, as far as she knew, had any other symptoms. If anybody was really very sick, there'd be a doctor. It was probably just smoke inhalation, too minor and in too little of the refugee population to bother about.

Grandpa balled up the napkin and disposed of it next to his other on his empty plate. The food wasn't very plentiful, but it seemed like a greater inconvenience to El Shoua to ask for more when she knew that Grant City was paying for the refugee camp. There weren't very many people -- maybe two hundred folks tops out of a five thousand strong population had survived the raid -- but they had all come with nothing. Grant City wasn't small, but it wasn't big either, and the additional welfare of two centuries of people was a strain to it.

El Shoua stared almost angrily around the room at the people, who all shifted and went back to the dinners and conversations. She and Grandpa were outsiders here like they'd never noticed they'd been in Grant Town. It had grown up around them from a small farm community when El Shoua was young, just starting school and the senior class was comprised of three students. Now they were the only country people to have survived, and worst yet, they had been the first hit and had not managed to warn the town. It was easy to separate themselves from Grandpa and El Shoua, easy because there was nobody else in the room to blame. The trouble was, El Shoua welcomed it. Nobody had been through -- survived -- what El Shoua and her grandfather had. They were mostly numb, and El Shoua was beginning to discover that she could not feel that way.

A man walked into the room with a clipboard in his hands.

"If I could have your attention please!" he called into the quiet murmur as if they had been making a din loud enough to raise the dead. "We're conducting a census of the population here in order to match it against the names of missing family members that have been submitted to the city government. If you could please line up in two forms -- men on this side, women and children four years of age or younger on this side."

He pointed with an officious air to the table where on the opposite side two chairs were set. A woman stepped in through the door behind him and sat smartly in one chair, and without further ado he sat in the other.

The room stared dully back at them. Finally, one of the school seniors pushed back his seat, an instinct bred, no doubt, from the years of making a straight line to and from the classroom, hands on your heads and no talking! He walked deliberately to the place where the man with the clipboard had pointed, but El Shoua could see the uncertainty gracing his shoulders as he stood there, close enough for her to hear him breathe. More and more of the others were standing now, making their way to form a line. El Shoua put an arm around her grandfather's shoulders and helped him rise to his feet. Because they were so close to the door, even their slow walk and late start meant that she got him near the head of the line. She stayed with him, unwilling to leave.

"Name?" the woman asked Grandpa as he came first in line.

"Al Golden."

"Is that your legal name?" she asked as she consulted several pages with alacrity.

"Alan." Grandpa cleared his throat and spelled it.

"Gotcha. Do you have any papers of identity? Any cards? Birth certificate?"

The absurdity of the woman's requests made El Shoua feel as she were trapped in some satirical play without a script. Improvisation was never her best suit, but Grandpa had it covered in his reply.

"I think I left those in my other pants."

The woman ignored him and turned to a machine humming at her elbow, nudging over a pair of scissors that were in her way. She punched it a few times with her finger in the same authoritative and aggressive manner she dealt with people, and it chirped back at her cheerfully before a small card spewed out. It was made out of a thick stock paper and had Grandpa's name and and date of birth on one side, then a long alphanumeric string of characters on the other.

"This is your temporary ID card. Don't lose it, keep it on you at all times, and if you find any mistakes, there's a form on the back of the card. Black or blue ink only. Print legibly. Next! Name?"

"Ellen Golden," replied El Shoua.

"Women and children under the age of five are to report to the other line. You aren't on my list. Name?"

Mild indignation battled with a desire to not cause a scene. El Shoua reminded herself that she was in the wrong line, and it wasn't the woman's flt that her name wouldn't be on the list she had. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, El Shoua shrugged at Grandpa, who winked, and helped him back to his seat at the other end of the table, their pillowcases clutched by a corner each in her left hand. Unfortunately, the line she was supposed to be in was already wound to a far corner of the room. El Shoua wasn't about to make Grandpa stand in line with her, and it was impractical to move him from table to table as the line moved forward.

Making her way to the end of the line required slipping through several winds and twists -- 'straight line' was a mock-able request -- and groups of teen girls who dismissed any idea of breaking up their gossipy circles for order. El Shoua got several nasty looks from people, presumably because they thought she was trying to cut before them. It was stupid -- it was just a line.

Thirty minutes later, El Shoua was finally back at the table, half a dozen from the front. Grandpa was talking to an older woman who was attempting to keep two raucous toddlers swinging their blanket-and-pillowcases at each other under control and hold an adult conversation. El Shoua felt a pang of sympathy go through her. She recognized the children as being in the class under hers at school, and she knew at that age that any lapse in attention could result in mild disaster.

Finally, she was next in line, and she watched at the girl in front of her was processed.

"Do you have any identification? Bank card, official ID, or a birth certificate?"

"Yeah," said the girl, digging into a jean pocket and pulling out a school identification card. She handed it over.

El Shoua watched in shock as the man took the scissors that she'd noticed earlier and cut the girl's ID into four pieces in three efficient snips of the blades. The girl let out a squeak of protest, but the man was already printing out her temporary ID and repeating the same lines that El Shoua'd heard earlier when Grandpa had gotten his. The pieces of her school ID went into a small bag underneath the table that El Shoua hadn't noticed earlier.

The girl's eyebrows were still in her hairline as she walked away, her mouth dropped into a perfect O of disgusted confusion.

"Name?"

"Ellen Golden."

"Identification? Bank cards --"

"Nothin'," said El Shoua, shaking her pillowcase. "I lost everything."

The machine printed out her temporary, and she was instructed not to lose it

In a daze, El Shoua made her way back to her grandfather, glancing down at her new card without really seeing it. Carelessly, she shoved the ID into her back pocket before sitting down. Grandpa and the lady were still talking, and El Shoua allowed, for a few seconds, for her thoughts to race. Why were they cutting up people's original ID cards? Wouldn't it be better if they had more than one form of identification? As far as she'd seen, the numbers on her temporary card didn't correlate at all to her official registry number. They hadn't even asked her if she knew her number.

"Shoua?"

She shook her head clear of cobweb and tuned her attention to Grandpa.

"Hi," said the lady he's been talking to. "I'm Lindy Afuha'amango. I moved to Grant Town about a year ago with my grandsons. I think I've seen you at the school?"

"Yeah, I would've had them next year."

"Did you hear about the fires? Word is, they're out."

"About time! It's been weeks!"

"Well, you know what they tell us." Dr. Afuha'amango snorted. "It's the drought. The chemicals. The wildfires in the forest."

El Shoua shook her heard. "It wasn't a tower of burning tires. I think they let it burn. They didn't want anything left of Grant Town. I don't know why."

"It looks better on the news," said Grandpa cryptically. "Total destruction, complete chaos even in the country. It rallies the people up."

Dr. Afuha'amango shifted slightly in her seat. Reaching slowly into her pillowcase, she brought out a grey and black square. El Shoua realized that it was a newspaper, folded several times over, probably only one page. The refugees hadn't seen even the hint of a newspaper -- or anything else to read for that matter -- since their arrival. Dr. Afuha'amango carefully unfolded the paper, keeping it down near her knees just below the table. Without knowing why, El Shoua casually arranged herself so that she was blocking as much as possible of what was in Dr. Afuha'amango's lap from the officials with the clipboards at the other end of the table.

"How --?"

"I've got a friend," said Dr. Afuha'amango. "I was a doctor before I retired. Sometimes they come to the fence and we talk. They've been slipping me as much of the day's paper as they can through the chain link."

"You have more?" asked El Shoua.

Dr. Afuha'amango shook her head in the negative. "I've been -- I've been using them in the latrine. It's the only place I feel is safe. I'm afraid. I don't even know why. They've never said we couldn't have newspapers, but I'm afraid. What if they stopped letting people come up to the fence? They could claim all sorts of things -- public health. Invent an epidemic and keep the public away."

"Why?" El Shoua thought about her grandfather and his protestations that he was fine. It was weeks since the fire, and he was still coughing up dark mucus. She knew that he wasn't the only one who was coughing. What if something from the chemicals in the smoke they'd breathed had gotten to him?

Instead of answering, Dr. Afuha'amango gestured to the paper. El Shoua peered down at the paper and saw a large headline reading, Death toll rising for Town massacre and underneath it a smaller one, One hundred twenty confirmed alive. She raised her eyebrows. One hundred twenty was just over half of the number of refugees standing with her in this very room. No wonder they'd wanted to take a census -- it just seemed silly to her now that it had taken so many weeks for them to do it.

"Read it," said Grandpa.

So she did, and a tingle of apprehension traveled down her spine as she started. Further and further into the article, El Shoua's sense of foreboding grew. It read like a dime novel, a mystery or suspense thriller. It began with a short, stirring description of the raid filled with details inviting collective sympathy and arousing animus sentiment against the Chintian people who'd attacked them. After a few more sentences like that, she started skipping paragraphs, skimming for the meat of the article. But she couldn't find anything. There was no real information, only a thesaurus's worth of words saying the same thing over and over again.

"But what're they saying in congress?" she asked. "What about the county council? Or even the city one? What're they saying about us?"

"I don't know. I don't think anyone knows," said Dr. Afuha'amango, her voice low and full of concern. "From what my friends say, we aren't even talking about retribution in concrete terms, but it seems to be the only thing we really talk about. They talk about constructing more buildings for us, about costs and taxes. It's been almost a month, but nobody really knows what's happening off-planet."

"Are they -- are they gonna keep us in here?" asked El Shoua in a hissing whisper. "Is this what it's all about? The ID cards. They cut up old ones. We haven't been out of the camp -- we all sleep in one room, full of teenagers and their hormones. We don't even have plumbing. It's been a month, we don't have plumbing!" Her tone rose slightly at the end of the sentence, but El Shoua managed to keep her tone low. "What do you thinks gonna happen to us?"

Grandpa put his hand on El Shoua's, his eyes trained behind her where the officials sat. "There's more. Lindy says there's talk. People worried about the economy. We're costin' 'em money, and they're worried when we get out, we'll take their jobs. Kids'll crowd their schools, take taxpayer dollars that their parents never paid."

"There's talk," said Dr. Afuha'amango, "of creating a new Grant Town right here."

A panic mingled with horror washed over El Shoua.

"But they can't," she said in a shrill whisper. "They can't keep us here. We're people. We're the victims. We're not -- we're not homeless by choice, but they can't make this our home. We're most of us young. Oh, jeez, we're most of us too young to know how to fight against it. How're we gonna get out of here?"

Slowly folding up the newspaper and sliding it back into her pillowcase, Dr. Afuha'amango shook her head.

"I don't know how," she said, "but I'm going to try."

A racking cough from Grandpa caused them both to turn his way. His face was blotchy, ashen white mixed with red from exertion, and it was scary for El Shoua to realize that it wasn't out of place on him, not now. He'd been getting sicker for days, weeks, and she hadn't noticed his gradual decline, so wrapped up as she was in staying apart from everything except him. He was her world now, and she wasn't half as good to him as that called for.

"Soon," said El Shoua. "We gotta go soon."

"I know," said Dr. Afuha'amango. "I have my grandchildren to worry about. It should have been last week, but it'll be soon."

*

Every day after receiving their ID cards, Dr. Afuha'amango and her grandchildren were with El Shoua and Grandpa. El Shoua fell back into teaching, partially, because she was the only person in the camp who had as much experience with small children as she did. The teenagers spoke of babysitting a couple times a week and the older people of the children they'd raised, but El Shoua knew that getting a group of preschoolers to behave was like conducting an orchestra; every child was different and interacted with the others in his own, unique way. She'd been paid to conduct before, and it wasn't so hard with the twenty or so children in her care now.

El Shoua discovered one day that her ID card was incorrect. It said her name on it as sure as she knew it, but closer examination showed that the date of birth was wrong. With conflicting emotions, El Shoua realized that they'd given her the identity of her Aunt Ellen. It made her sad to remember that Aunt Ellen was gone, dead in the dry yard that she took such care of. Strangers had recovered her body, and burial had been large and impersonal. Her tombstone was one of a few labeled; farmers could identify the charred remains of missing family members with more certainty than the poor souls left to sift through Grant Town's masses of corpses. In the end, most people were memorialized without concrete identification. It was easier that way, especially with entire families gone.

But in another way, it made El Shoua feel closer to her aunt now that she was in possession of her identity. It had never really been a big issue to her that she and her aunt had shared a name. Ellen Golden was a name for forms and official documents, but she'd been El Shoua Golden for all her life. Now that she had this piece of paper, El Shoua realized what an honor it was to be named after her aunt, and she wondered why her parents had done that. She didn't know much about her parents -- she hadn't really been interested in them growing up. She had two parents with her, her Aunt Ellen and Grandpa, and never felt like there was a hole in her life. Certainly their deaths meant nothing to her compared with the enormity of Aunt Ellen's. And now she had this one link to all three, a name that had been chosen and lent and kept.

Every day, Dr. Afuha'amango had a new scrap of newspaper to share with El Shoua and Grandpa. The raid on Grant Town featured heavily, whether because it was the topic most covered or because her friends knew that it was what they were most interested in. Behind the features describing the aftermath of the raid in heartbreaking, almost contemptible terms, there was a tiny trickle of frightening information. It really did look like there was a current of unease running through Grant City because of the refugee camp. Milk prices had gone up, fresh produce was scarce, and natural resources were receiving an unprecedented price jump. Grant Town hadn't been the only farming community in the planet, and it certainly wasn't the most important even in the county, but the aftershock of its destruction was affecting everyone.

"People are scared," said Grandpa. "Scared it could happen to them, scared of what it means for 'em."

A shuttle flew by low overhead, and a few teenagers screamed, then laughed. It was a month since the raid, and air traffic still sent shivers down everybody's spine. It couldn't be that hard to redirect traffic, El Shoua thought angrily, not for the first time. Have a little consideration, people!

"Sometimes I think they do it on purpose," muttered Dr. Afuha'amango. "Seems like all they want to do it make everybody afraid. Did you see in the paper today where they're monitoring the phones? They say the raids went on unchecked too long, somebody must have been helping them. But listening in on our phone conversations without a search warrant! I don't really think they'll stop at listening for some Benedict Arnold, do you?"

"Where was that?" asked El Shoua.

Dr. Afuha'amango scoffed. "Oh, half on article on the back pages. It was almost written in small print, like an afterthought. I don't think very many people even realize what happening to them."

"Greatest thing that ever happened for our government," said Grandpa. "Bet they wished the Chintis went crazy years ago. Can't understand why they did now. Ain't in their nature, these raids, and it sure as hell ain't in them to go about massacring entire towns." He sighed. "You think you know a people after you fought 'em -- and I fought 'em for thirty years. They were gentlemen in war, but I guess they got a new government, too, now."

This wasn't congruous with what El Shoua knew about the Chintis. In school lessons and in the papers, she'd been taught that the Chintis were the foremost example of an alien race when compared to human beings. They didn't have the same emotional attachments to people and places that humans did, and there wasn't even one specific species of Chinti, even in this space-faring age of technology and mass transit.

Due to the relatively few and isolated areas on Chintia where it was feasible for a person to live, there had evolved three distinct races. They were most commonly known by their different physical features: the desert dwelling race was dark and sandy-colored and so called the brown Chintis; the ones that had stayed in the colder, mountains regions of the east were called the blue or green Chintis, or sometimes the hairy ones; the ones from the tropical continent were known as the three-thumbed Chinti, and they were the least seen of the species. The most famous of them had been the biracial general who had led the peace talks that ended the last war, a small woman with curly white hair and the ashen, sickly color of a blue Chinti.

She had been assassinated just prior to the final talks, El Shoua remembered, because not every Chinti had agreed to the concessions she had made for peace. Her death had been a lucky thing for the government, too; it had united the Chintian people together under her caused and had tugged sympathetically at the heartstrings of every human being sick and tired of a decades old war. Now it was only twenty years later, and her death was rendered meaningless. From a few fringe groups with no government ties on each side going and raiding a couple of planets every few months, death tolls in the tens keeping their strained if hopeful peace at a low conflict status, they were surely on a roller coaster ride to war with the devastating Grant Town raid. Even if it had been a faction unaffiliated with the official Chintian government, the human government couldn't let it go for long.

Or could it?

"Seems strange to hear you say that," said El Shoua. "Chintis are animals. They don't feel like we do."

"No, girl, they ain't. They got feelings same as you and me, you don't believe what they tell you in the papers. They never hurt the POWs, they never did no torturing at all, and I'm not so sure I could say the same of our dear government. If you ask me, we had to stop the war when we did because too many folks were coming home in the trades, talkin' about how good they was treated, and it was an open secret that we weren't so sweet and pretty to our Chinti captures."

El Shoua was shocked, but by the look on Dr. Afuha'amango's face, this wasn't news to her.

"I'd just taken the oath at the time," she said. "Did my internship in one of our camps. Polite as could be, some of those kids. Young, like I was, and scared and missing home. I doctored them up, was going to do my residency there, but the war ended, and we sent them all home. Not everybody came home, though, and I think that's why the raids started. We hurt too many people, showed them what animals we were, and they couldn't let peace come in the way of revenge."

"But the raids are against civilians," said El Shoua.

"Used to be, near nobody was a civilian. In any case, the Chinti didn't have no real hard feelings against us. Naw, what they really was passionate about was the Azus. They hated the Azus 'bout as much as a body could hate anything. Always in the camps trying to tell us that the Azus had led us down this war, that they were evil, that they were terrible. Always blasting their mouths off and cussin' out the other guys. But they were damn near apathetic when it come to humans. Tell ya what, Chintis had their noses straight up and their heads in their --"

"I'll tell you something that's not real well known," said Dr. Afuha'amango, cutting that thread of the conversation off short. "The Chinti's have three genders. Or, really, I should say that they have two and a half genders."

"Now that is something I didn't know," said Grandpa. "And I fought them."

"It's the third ones. The ones with three thumbs? They're born physically the same -- no sex characteristics at all. Small people, straight bodies, almost no hips or chests. When puberty hits, they chose a sexual identity, and that's theirs. It's a mental thing with them. We had one, a boy. Said he could carry children to term. Their young don't nurse -- I asked him, and he said theirs were born developed enough to eat certain foods."

"But how -- how could he get pregnant?" asked El Shoua, truly interested.

"Don't laugh," warned Dr. Afuha'amango. "I did, and it insulted him, I remember. It has something to do with that extra thumb on their left hand. As far as I could tell during my examinations, he didn't necessarily have two sets of genitalia. It was more like he had one set with dual purposes." Dr. Afuha'amango glanced at Grandpa, who wouldn't catch her eye but had a teasing grin on his face. "He mentioned something about a choice or predilection at puberty, but he also spoke of being in his twenties before he -- and please don't make me recite the rest of this, I can't believe I've said as much. He didn't want to talk about it with me."

Although it was apparent that Dr. Afuha'amango was embarrassed to relate the information -- it was full of stuttering and empty of her general clinical air that was used when she was speaking of medical things, El Shoua was fascinated. This had certainly never been in her lessons at school. It was obvious that Dr. Afuha'amango, probably an old hand at talking about sex medically, was flustered over this third gender, probably due to the fact that it had been told to her as a sort of secret by someone, not written as facts in a text book. Was it the sexual nature of the content or the idea that she was breaking a secret that bothered her the most? El Shoua couldn't tell, but the uncharacteristically reticent explanation only added to her interest in the subject.

"Never heard of that before," said Grandpa.

"Like I said, it isn't well-known. I think only a few of us doctors, and of course those higher up in service, really knew about it. I don't know if I'm not the only one who really got the full story on it all. Seems to me I remember most people just calling them a neuter sex or androgynous. But they're not rightly a third sex, are they?"

"It's like those frogs that can change gender," said El Shoua. "Only different."

"I've known some three thumbs," said Grandpa. "You can tell the men from the women easy enough. They're not curvy, but the women are women alright."

"That's why I speculate that they aren't a truly gender neutral branch of the species. There has to be some deciding factor within their own genetic code that helps them assign their genders when they reach puberty. Their condition is probably an evolutionary throwback -- or leap -- maybe from a time when their people weren't diverse enough in the sexes within their own population. The Chintis aren't fecund, and they have a long adolescence. This was one way of combating a population problem."

"The Gen had a third thumb," said Grandpa, referring to the general who'd led the peace talks.

"She was only half," said El Shoua, halfway curious and halfway smirking. "I wonder how that works."

"Probably the same as you and me," snapped Dr. Afuha'amango, which caused Grandpa to suck spit into his wind pipe and choke. "Oh, grow up, Al."

The boys ran to them and begged El Shoua for a story, and so their conversation ended, but El Shoua kept her mind on it even as she regurgitated some children's fairy tale she knew. Was it really possible that there were three genders on Chintia? She had known, casually, that the different races were more separate than those humanity offered within itself, but it was almost beyond comprehension that a species could be so disparate and still be able to produce children with each other. How many thousands of years had the different Chintis stayed moored within their respective habitats? How were they even related at all?

Could they even be called one species? It was true that the Chintis were completely alien to humans, El Shoua reflected. Even those species whom humans came into contact with were more similar to them than the Chintis were. Traders sometimes stopped at Grant Planet, but behind the masks of true extra terrestrial origins were a friendly smile and a story to josh about over a drink at a bar. El Shoua knew that the club where young people spent nights dancing was sometimes frequented by an alien or two when a trader had a shuttle in Grant Town. She'd even seen a sleek, furred Azus once on a visit to Grant City for a school field trip, standing on a street corner waiting to cross.

El Shoua lay in bed that night unable to sleep, pondering questions that the afternoon had raised. She had always been taught that the Chintis were savages, but her grandfather and Dr. Afuha'amango were in obvious agreement that they were not. It occurred to El Shoua that her grandfather had never said anything disparaging about Chintis as a group. He had damned the raids and raiders on multiple occasions, but wouldn't he had damned a raid from anyone? If it had been a human faction wrecking havoc in the backwoods planets, wouldn't he had grunted in the same disgust that he had for the Chintian raids?

Neither had Aunt Ellen said much of anything against them. Aunt Ellen had had a strong opinion which she was not unwilling to share with the general population, and the raids had been as much of interests to her as they had been to everybody, especially when they'd moved in from distant planets and onto Grant itself. But though El Shoua could recall specific cases of townspeople speaking of the Chintian people in the same general tone that the newspaper articles were producing -- a mixed fear and animosity -- it was surprising for her to realize that she'd never heard the same from her family.

I'd thought they just weren't interested in it, El Shoua thought. I thought they were too backwards. It shamed her to admit that to herself, especially because she now realized that they both had been more than qualified to submit an opinion on the matter. In the town, there were plenty of people who'd been in the war -- mostly parents of her friends and those older. But the town was -- had been -- a growing suburbia, with many affluent young families and their loud opinions. How many times had Aunt Ellen grumbled about the changing population, how many times had she related in amusement the news that Grant Town was the fastest growing town in the county? El Shoua had taken her dismissal of the new families as country talk from a middle aged lady set in her ways, but Aunt Ellen hadn't traveled, hadn't she been to other places?

El Shoua suspected that her aunt had known more about what sort of people were in the known world than she did. Aunt Ellen had always told her so. She grinned into her blanket, thinking what Aunt Ellen would say if she could hear El Shoua's thoughts. She would probably berate her soundly, shaking her finger and letting spit fly from her mouth, before retreating with wounded pride into the the kitchen to clean.

Out of the corner of her eye, El Shoua saw Dr. Afuha'amango get up with the two boys and pick their way through the people to the door. Once or twice a night, the three of them made their way to the outhouse at the corner of the property. El Shoua knew now that sometimes these trips were scheduled, using the changing shift of the overseers that guarded the refugee camp -- for their own protecting -- as a timepiece. While the boys peed sleepily, Dr. Afuha'amango would slip to the other side of the outhouse, guarded from view, and speak with friends who had come down from the city. Tonight the boys stumbled drunkenly, and El Shoua suspected this trip was not as innocent in nature as she'd once believed.

She waited a long time for them to come back, but before they did, she drifted off to sleep.

Breakfast that next morning meant cold eggs and lumpy oatmeal, reminiscent of something she would have eaten at the farm. As she did most days, El Shoua wished that on her last meal back home she'd taken two spoonfuls of jam and lots of butter, luxuries that the camp did not offer. As usual, Dr. Afuha'amango took longer to rouse herself and the boys and to get them all through the breakfast line. When she sat down, her cheeks were unusually flushed and her eyes shone intensely.

Over the bickering of her grandsons, Dr. Afuha'amango whispered, "Tonight. When I take the boys. You two come five minutes later. Meet us by the outhouse. We're going tonight."

"If there's anything you don't want to leave behind," said Grandpa, "may be a good idea to forget it by the outhouse today."

The rest of breakfast, and indeed the whole day, passed in turns unbelievably quickly and so slowly that El Shoua thought she was going to scream. She was finally getting out of his infernal camp, to a place where Grandpa would get real medical attention, not just worrisome half-glances from an impotent Dr. Afuha'amango, who could only diagnose smoke inhalation and bronchitis without more advanced medical equipment. She'd have a chance for a real shower, not just a wet cloth wiped over the dirtiest part of her skin and dipped into filthy community water. El Shoua could barely contain her impatience all day, and well into the evening she kept pinching herself to make sure it was all real, that she would not wake up at home and hear Aunt Ellen in the kitchen and Grandpa in the bathroom.

Either way, she was getting out of the refugee camp tonight. The thought was inebriating. El Shoua spent the afternoon torn between watching twenty kids, aged from just under a year to just over twelve, and waiting for dusk to fall and dinner to be over. Grandpa and Dr. Afuha'amango were neither as outwardly excited as El Shoua was, but she was the grim lines around Grandpa's mouth and knew that he, too, was waiting for lights out and for the escape.

Almost before she was ready, El Shoua was tucked under her blanket next to Grandpa, waiting for everybody to fall asleep. She knew that the plan was reliant up the changing of the guards. Dr. Afuha'amango was going to take the boys to the outhouse just before shift change; El Shoua was to help Grandpa out just after. If they were lucky, no suspicions would be aroused, and the separate guards would add to confusion in the aftermath.

The minutes crept by. El Shoua listened to the now-familiar sounds of the refugee community falling asleep. Even though she didn't know most of them, even though neither she nor they had bothered to make an effort to correct that, she felt that she was a part of the same thing they were, or perhaps that they were a part of her. It pained her, strangely, to leave here while they were stuck, destined to be lost in the same place for who knew how long. It wasn't fair for anyone to stay here, especially not a bunch of teenage kids who were, in turns whispering and laughing with one another and crying not so silently in the darkness.

Soon, El Shoua saw Dr. Afuha'amango begin to stir. Chancing a look at the guard by the door, she noticed that he was looking at his watch and stretching. This was obviously the sign that Dr. Afuha'amango was looking for, a little signature the guard gave when it was beginning to look like the end of his shift. The boys mumbled as their grandmother stirred them, two identical sets of hands brushing away her gentle touch. But they were by woken and taken to the door, wrapped each in their blankets to protect them against the cold, and El Shoua heard one of them say with earnest reflection, "I really gotta pee, Grammy. I gotta pee bad."

Dr. Afuha'amango smiled at the guard with helplessness, a parent of young children whose bladders could not or would not stay trained throughout the night. The guard nodded at her, probably glad that she was doing her part to cut down on bed wetting, which meant a lot of mess and bother, even in the middle of the night. El Shoua nudged Grandpa with her foot, and he turned lazily toward her, his wide eyes betraying his alert status.

"They woke me," whispered Grandpa. "I gotta pee, too."

El Shoua couldn't help but giggle at the way that Grandpa was playing his part like a spy in the middle of enemy territory. But he was in the middle of enemy territory, wasn't he? And wouldn't it be better in the long run if they could leave behind witnesses who would assure the guards that they had gone out only for the old man to pee?

"We'll wait for them to come back."

"Can't wait long. Old men have kidney problems, you know."

He stayed, fidgeting slightly, looking for all the world like sleep had been jarred from him and left him restless. El Shoua knew that he was a troubled sleeper anyway, waking several times in the middle of the night, sometimes to pee, sometimes, even, to take her with him because he was tired (and maybe afraid, she reflected). They were not as well-known to the guards as Dr. Afuha'amango and her grandsons, but they would not be stopped.

A shuffling at the door stilled them both. The relief shift had arrived. El Shoua watched, worried that this was where the plan would go awry. If the guard told his replacement about Dr. Afuha'amango and the boys, she and Grandpa could be told to wait until they returned before they were allowed to go to the bathroom. Good fortune was on their side, though, because she only saw the two guards nod at one another congenially before the first slipped out of the room. There was still a chance that the boys would catch the attention of the guard, but they had not been out there so long as to warrant suspicion.

El Shoua counted slowly to one hundred, stuck out her finger, and counted again. When she'd finished with her whole hand, from pinky to thumb, she touched Grandpa's shoulder. He nodded once in agreement, and sat up slowly.

"Let's go, girl," he said lowly.

She watched him struggle to his feet for a few moments before getting up and steadying him. Wrapping their blankets around their shoulders, El Shoua and Grandpa made a slow trek across the room to the door. The guard on duty didn't even glance up from a crossword as she told him where they were going, and he waved them out the door. El Shoua decided that if she ever had to keep anyone locked up, she would be sure to pay her guards well enough that they feared to lose their jobs over doing crosswords.

For one terrifying moment, El Shoua couldn't see Dr. Afuha'amango or her grandsons, and she wondered if the three of them had been stopped by the guard and the plan discovered. But then a shadow caught her eye, cast by the winter moon, and El Shoua and Grandpa hurried over to the outhouse. Grandpa whistled twice, as sharp and piercing as the wind. Gaining speed, they didn't stop by the door of the outhouse but circumvented it to slip behind.

"Thank goodness," whispered Dr. Afuha'amango. "We were worried about you."

El Shoua saw behind the chain link fence a group of four people, men of middle age whom she knew were former associates of Dr. Afuha'amango's. Next to them was one of the twins, wide-eyed and yawning. His brother was clinging to the fence in anticipation. Obviously, they'd decided to get the boys up and over the ten-foot-high chain link as soon as possible. Grandpa walked over to the boy on the fence and whispered something to him. He nodded, and Grandpa grabbed him in his arm and stuck a foot in the chain link. He was going to carry the boy to the top of the fence, and already someone was climbing the other side to receive him.

"I'll stay below," said El Shoua, "in case Grandpa drops him. But you two go together."

"Yes," agreed Dr. Afuha'amango. "We have to hurry."

El Shoua could see Grandpa struggling with twenty-five pounds of extra weight as he went one-handed up the chain link. When she was not much older than the boys, El Shoua had seen Grandpa as a sort of Uberman, stronger and more fearless than anyone she'd known. As she'd grown bigger herself, he had shrunk more and more -- not in her esteem but in what she realized he could accomplish. If the past month had taught her anything, though, it was that fearlessness was not something to covet, and it wasn't something he'd ever had; it was his ability to overcome his fears and function in spite of them that she wanted, like defying them was the most important act in any given situation.

Unburdened, Dr. Afuha'amango was already drawn level with Grandpa and his charge. The chain link rattled and twisted, bowing out under their weight. El Shoua glanced around fearfully, aware that the security afforded to them by the outhouse also hid any approaching guard coming to investigate strange noises in the night. Breathe, she told herself, eye on the boy and hand clutching the blanket around her shoulders. Grandpa was nearly to the top of the fence, Dr. Afuha'amango hovering inches to his left, and a man was waiting at the top to take the boy. This was the most dangerous part. They were above the roof line of the outhouse and clearly visible from all sides.

Grandpa made it to the top. With no ceremony, the boy was handed over the fence, and the man on the other side scrambled down three or four feet an ape on crack.

"Get ready," the man said in voice barely audible to El Shoua. "Just like Tamiano."

With that, the man chucked the kid down to one of his waiting companions, who caught him easily, stepping to the side and lowering the boy to the ground. As El Shoua climbed onto the chain link fence, the man on the other side of her pushed off lightly and landed with a soft thump on the ground below. In the moonlight she could see that he was dark skinned with thick eyebrows.

Grandpa had a leg over the fence, and Dr. Afuha'amango was sprawled over the top bar length-wise, edging her body over for a drop, fingers clutching the fence chain desperately. Grandpa was now on the other side, stubbing his thick boot toes into the small spaces between the chain link and going much more slowly, like he was afraid of falling backwards. El Shoua tried to move as slowly as possible on the fence so that she didn't jostle her grandfather and Dr. Afuha'amango. Some of the men were on the fence again, helping steady Grandpa as he backed awkwardly down like a stiff-jointed marionette.

Gripping the fence so tightly that the metal was cutting into the skinny parts of her fingers, El Shoua hung suspended for a moment to catch her breath. Her boots were much too big for her to balance for long in one spot; she felt like she was slipping every second she stayed still. About four feet higher and El Shoua would have to move much more quickly -- she would be in the open area where the guards could see her. There was nothing to do but do it, though, and taking one last deep breath, she started climbing again as quickly and quietly as possible.

Dr. Afuha'amango had made it to the ground by the time El Shoua reached the top of the fence. She laid her blanket across the top before she hoisted herself up, but even then her legs were off it. The chain link spiked up and caught at her ragged jeans as she pulled a leg over, and she jerked herself free so hard that she almost lost her balance and fell over the fence. As it was, she slipped precariously to one side, and El Shoua was only just able to use that momentum to swing herself over the top and onto the other side. There were no stabilizing bars projection on this side of the fence; it was blank chain link from top to bottom. She scurried down, aware that this was only the beginning. If they were caught out here, there was no denying that they had been trying to escape.

Faster, she told herself, and halfway down, El Shoua pushed off, falling backward almost three feet and arcing to a stumbling stall on solid ground. She heard the horrible tinkle of chain link slapping the metal frames, and for a moment she thought that they would be caught and that it was all her fault. But either the guard did not hear or attested the sounds to the wind -- or perhaps they had moved so quickly away from the fence that they did not see the guard come out to investigate. For they were leaving, almost running in the darkness, crouched low to the ground. The boys were in the arms of two of their rescuers, probably asleep. Behind them were Grandpa and Dr. Afuha'amango, and between them and El Shoua herself were more of the strangers, always glancing back at her.

She had no idea where they were or where they were going. El Shoua had never left the refugee camp, and she didn't know the geography around Grant City well enough to even speculate how far out they were. She had studied the planet extensively in school, but the lessons on the known areas of Grant had been few. The city itself was only so large, and its surrounding countryside expansive. She just could not, from what she was seeing here, pinpoint her exact locations.

Still, she tried, dredging up old topographical maps in her head and trying to overlay photos she'd seen of Grant City country, rotating and inclining the map she had like it was on a projector. The ground they covered was level and yellow with wild winter grass, a weed that she would have pulled up back home on the farm. As far as she could see was deceptively flat, small hills hidden in waving grass and precipitous shadows. Though the moon was out and bright, El Shoua couldn't see anything but that which was directly in front of her, like she had blinders on in this race. She was without a guide in this flatland.

They ran for ten, maybe fifteen minutes straight, standing taller once they'd gone far enough. El Shoua's chest felt like knives were embedding themselves within it, and she stumbled more than once over her own feet. This was the second cross country trek her boots had made, and El Shoua knew that the blisters she'd been nursing back to health would come back in full force. Grandpa and Dr. Afuha'amango were being helped along by one each of their rescuers, and El Shoua was drawn level with them now. Yonder in the distance she saw a scraggly smudge rise over the horizon: a line of trees. With a goal in sight, El Shoua found her second wind, and she saw Grandpa's unsteady steps become more sure as he, too, surely spied the cover ahead.

They were far enough away that the naked eye couldn't see them, but El Shoua sure knew that she'd feel safer in those trees. It was like back on the farm, racing the fire toward the trees, only she didn't know every dip and rise of the terrain and she wasn't certain of the distance. Keeping her eyes focused straight ahead, breathing heavily, El Shoua didn't think about anything but the approaching safety. It was like every breath she took pushed out all thoughts except the one: they must reach the forest soon, or she would fall over from exhaustion.

When they did, finally, reach the shadow the trees, El Shoua staggered and slowed. So close as they were, she almost cheered despite her fatigue. She stopped fully, putting her hands on her knees and panting. Grandpa and his helper turned and slowed, motioning her to catch up with them even as they half-jogged away from her. She shook her head and stayed bent over, trying to will the thundering of her pulse in her ears to quiet.

But it wasn't her heartbeat that she heard, she realized. El Shoua started, almost falling forward, as she assigned a label to the noise she was hearing. It was the sickening bom-bom-bom of a ship in atmosphere, riding low enough that the ground was shaking beneath her feet. She couldn't see it yet, but it spurred a renewed interest in the trees for her, and El Shoua took off for them like hell on fire. She didn't need to cry out a warning to anybody else in the party -- they were all speeding up after their relaxation at being so near the trees.

They were so close -- so close! So close to the trees, so close to being found. If they could make the trees before the ship saw them, they'd be okay. Even though ships were much faster than shuttles, they were nowhere near as maneuverable in atmospheric conditions, especially this low down. The ship, if it did see them disappear into the woods, wouldn't be able to follow them as they wound their way through the trees.

The others disappeared into the trees before she made it there. Guilt filled her as she saw that they had stopped and were waiting for her, probably worried that she would get lost and separated from them. The noise of the ship's engines were growing louder overhead, and El Shoua realized with something akin to relief that it was coming from the opposite direction that they had just run. It was coming from the city -- it would pass right over them without their being discovered if they were lucky enough for the ship not to scan the trees for their body heat.

As soon as El Shoua joined them, the group plunged deeper into the forest, the boys awake now as the two that carried them led the way through the maze of trees, apparently with some destination in mind. El Shoua noticed that the ground, rumbling still more with the force of the approaching ship's engines, sloped downward as they ran. The flat land they'd been crossing for thirty minutes had given way to an almost vertical descent, and she realized that they'd been on the top of one of the mountains of the famed Ribboned Plateau, so named because a thick, hilly forest surrounded all sides of the tops of the dessicated plateau.

Because Dr. Afuha'amango's friends had visited her so often, El Shoua knew that they couldn't been deep in the heart of the Ribboned Plateau. The closest plateau to the city was Passion Plateau, so named because young couples had often driven to the top in all-terrain vehicles and parked for a vista overlooking Grant City. This meant that there were roads nearby, maybe vehicles to drive them away from the plateaus and into the city. The thought of being able to sit down and catch her breath for a full minute pushed aside any pain that the brushing juniper needles brought her.

The lead two stopped suddenly, and everybody behind them stuttered to a halt. Everybody crouched together in a circle low in the brush, murmuring soft platitudes to the twins as they whined and cried and reached for their grandmother. Dr. Afuha'amango reached out a hand to each and brushed the tops of their heads, but she was too tired to take them into her arms and comfort them, and El Shoua saw the regret spill across her features as she shook her head at the boys. Salesi was particularly inconsolable, smacking Tamiano across the face when his brother got more attention.

The reason for stopping became apparent in a few short minutes; the ship passed overhead them, making the trees themselves shudder deep down to their roots. El Shoua almost didn't breathe to make up for the boys' fussing and wailing. Grandpa had her hand and was squeezing it tightly, his eyes closed into a squint. She held back just as desperately and hoped with everything she had that the ship would pass by without spotting them.

Why they'd decided to use a ship to search for them instead of a shuttle was obvious -- the ships were much faster and could travel more ground in a search. But El Shoua could help but wonder in the seconds it took the ship to pass overhead if they had not chosen the vehicle for another reason. It instilled the same stark terror in her that the raider had so many weeks ago, and if she'd been alone, she might not have made it to the trees for fear.

The boys quieted down soon after the ship had passed, and the group stayed silent and still in a tight circle for several minutes. El Shoua heard her own breathing synchronising with the rest of the group, and she imagined that their hearts were settling into a slow pace together. Soon, though, they began stirring, stretching cramped legs and groaning at the pulls in their muscles. El Shoua felt her neck actually cracked as she moved her head around. The ground was still trembling beneath their feet as the ship moved away.

"The time to go is now," said the man who had climbed to the top of the fence to catch Salesi. "We have to get to the truck before the ship turns around."

The others nodded in agreements and began moving without saying much, following the man without hesitation. He had gotten them this far; it was good enough for El Shoua to trust in him again. Besides, he had mentioned a car. It wasn't her favorite way to travel, but it was fast and, best of all, she'd be sitting down. Her legs felt like jelly and her arms felt like lead, and El Shoua really wanted a cigarette.

They had gotten further down the sloping side of the plateau than she'd realized; they approached level ground quite soon, and a wound in the trees revealed a concrete road like a scar in the middle of the landscape. Under cut branches laid meticulously atop was a truck on the side of the road. It was a so dirty that El Shoua had trouble discerning its color, but she figured out after a few minutes that it was supposed to be a dull, patchy black. It only took them moments to cast aside the tree branches, sap getting all over their hands and leaving nasty bits of juniper bark stuck to it. El Shoua was beginning to hate junipers.

They all climbed into the bed of the truck, lying flat and pulling their blankets over them for warmth. El Shoua regretted that when she saw that the strangers were unfurling a tarp they'd taken from the cab of the truck. It was thrown unceremoniously over the escapees, right up to their chins, and immediately the air beneath the tarp became humid and hot.

"If you hear us call through the window, throw the tarp over your faces," said one of the men as he and the two others climbed into the cab of the truck. El Shoua almost felt sorry for the two who had to ride in the jump seats -- almost.

The truck started, and they were on their way. The road was splotchy, full of pot holes where drying, cracking dirt had brought down large sections. It wasn't as bad as tar road would have been; in the heat that they experienced in summertime, entire sections would have melted off onto tires and clung there for miles, leaving lumpy bits all over. It was still a jarring ride that sent El Shoua's teeth into each other, spiking pain up her jaw.

Without meaning to, El Shoua drifted to sleep, and when she woke the tarp was being pulled away from her. She'd managed to not only sleep through it being pulled over her face, she slept while completely under it. She felt sticky and nasty from the heat, even though she was already freezing in the air. The sky outside was fuzzy with morning twilight still on the side of night, but it was stationary; the truck was stopped, stalled somewhere, and there wasn't a tarp to protect her from prying eyes.

A creaking sound grated across the silence of the night, and the truck lurched forward. They were driving on gravel now, taking winding twists and going slowly. El Shoua counted to one hundred and stuck out her pinky, trying to make sense of time. Halfway through her third set, a low mechanical grinding caught her attention, and the truck ease off the gravel and onto smooth pavement -- into a covered garage.

She didn't dare speak, didn't dare turn to look at her grandfather or the others. If this was a trap, she was not going to be the one to give them away. But she didn't have to wait long to find out if it were a trap or not -- the garage door had dropped down again with a soft plop, the truck doors opened and shut carelessly, and their rescuers were walking around to the side of the truck.

"We're here," said one.

El Shoua couldn't help it. She laughed, at first a soft gurgle of air but soon giving great guffaws that filled the garage with sound. They were here, they were safe, they were saved, they were away from the camp and hidden for now. It was the now that made her laugh, because El Shoua realized that, having left the refugee camp, she had no idea what she was going to do next. The only ID she had was a dead woman's ID that would mark her as a refugee and her old ID that would identify her place of origin as Grant Town. She was nonexistent, and worse. What were they going to do now that they were out of the camp?

Grandpa and Dr. Afuha'amango were watching her anxiously in the darkness, their faces shadowed but turned to her, and she laughed harder at the thought of them picking up and starting over in Grant City, two older people with lives behind them. Dr. Afuha'amango at least had been a doctor in Grant City and knew the area well, but Grandpa was a farmer and had been since he came back from the war forty years ago. He was the son of a farmer, and she had grown up living in their legacy. What was a man without his legacy?

She was slapped by one of Dr. Afuha'amango's acquaintances.

"Oh goodness," said El Shoua, giggling still. "Okay, that didn't help at all, the next time you wanna around snacking someone. Stop watching old movies, okay?"

There was a good chance that she was going to continue further into hysterics, but by chance she was distracted by a noise near the back of the garage. A lock was being undone, a knob was turning, and as she whirled around to face the sound, a thin sliver of artificial light came spilling into the blackness. The door to the house was being opened. The light blinded her for a moment, and El Shoua blinked several times, finally quieting down.

A head poked through the doorway. It was Marl.


	3. Chapter 3

"El Shoua! Mr. Golden!"

He flicked a switch near the door, and the room was flooded with light. His entire face was taken up by a toothy, flashy smile that belied the pure relief he must have felt at seeing them alive after so many months. El Shoua clattered out of the truck and tore across the garage. Behind Marl stood his father, Col Ahmadi looking far more grave than his son. El Shoua didn't bother with pleasantries, just stood before them grinning like an idiot, holding her blanket in her hands and twisting it in knots. It was ridiculous to think that seeing a few familiar faces would give her such joy, but it was true. Here were folks she knew, people to whom she had connections. She felt so much less alone in the world.

If anything could have made her happier, it was the yike-yike-yike she heard coming from the hall. It couldn't be -- but as she pushed Mr. Ahmadi and Marl aside and ducked into the house, she found it was true. Standing with both feet in the rungs of a wooden gate across the doorway to the laundry room hall was her little white dog, Panya. El Shoua clambered over the scant three foot barrier and knelt to the floor, letting her dog lick the insides of her ears thoroughly. She had thought that Panya was left behind at the farm, and to find that she was alive and well and with friends was enough to bring tears to El Shoua's eyes.

She looked up and found everybody crowded in the hall, waiting for her to move out of the doorway. She scooped up Panya and stood to the side in the foyer of the house, feeling a long skinny tongue cover every inch of her face in sticky slobber. Grandpa's eyes were smiling as big as his mouth, and she knew that he was just as glad as she was that the dog was alive. He used to watch the dog play for hours after nightfall and comment on how Panya always found a way to entertain herself.

"Grandpa, my dog."

"I seen that," said Grandpa, gladness ringing in his voice.

Mr. Ahmadi made his way forward and motioned past the foyer to the front room. They were too tired, now, to make any conversation. El Shoua and the others had been running all night; Marl and Mr. Ahmadi had been waiting for them to arrive. Both activities had taken their toll. Still, they tried.

"We got blankets," he said, indicating folded piles. There were pillows, too. He glanced down at El Shoua, who was petting Panya on the floor. Her tattered, smelly blanket was thrown across one shoulder. "You got some, too, I see."

"I kept this for a month. I guess I forgot to leave it behind."

"Kinda handy leaving," said Grandpa, his voice rough and gravely like the drive they'd taken up the Ahmadi's lane. "Used it like a cloak in the forest, kept the stickers off my hands. Still got stuck."

"I'll put them in the wash," said Marl, starting toward them with outstretched hands. Everybody in the group had taken their blanket out of the truck, even the twins, and they all handed them silently over, watching as he went out of the room. Going from a month where the most important thing was to never, ever leave her pillowcase and blanket unattended, El Shoua was nervous to see it disappear like that. How would she recognize it without the jam stain on the corner?

"I guess y'all are tired. We don't have beds for you, but there's a soft spot on the front room floor." Mr. Ahmadi's eyes softened as he took in their bedraggled appearance. "Tomorrow, we'll talk."

"And bathe," muttered Dr. Afuha'amango.

Mr. Ahmadi motioned again to the blankets and pillows on the couch, which had been pushed out to allow for sleeping space on the floor. Slowly, they all grabbed a blanket and a pillow, then stared at the pile that still remained on the couch. There was more than one blanket for everybody, and El Shoua felt wealthy. She snatched up a second blanket, almost like she was afraid that the supply would dwindle down. Making up her bed with a practiced hand, El Shoua finished in time to help Dr. Afuha'amango set up the boys' spot; soon they snuggled together in a corner, little brown eyes closed and dark, wavy hair falling across their face.

"Story?" asked one.

"Peas?" asked another. "Peas, Sowa?"

Grandpa stretched out on the floor at their feet like a watchful cat even though the crick of his joints was almost audible. Dr. Afuha'amango lay down with her cheek to the top of their heads, patting the spot next to the boys. El Shoua settled down and closed her eyes, thinking of something to tell the boys, anything.

"A long time ago, there was a dog who liked to dance," she began. "One day, after dancing for her pet human to bring her water, there was a loud noise, and she went to investigate it. It was a flying saucer, and pieces of it broke off in the sky and landed on the dog's home. There was a fire, and the dog was scared. But she knew that there was a lake that she could get into where the fire couldn't touch her ..." Slowly, El Shoua spun the tale of her last day on the farm as Panya's story, and long before she finished the twins were asleep. "And when she woke up, it was all a dream."

*

The first thing El Shoua did when she woke up was pee in a real porcelain toilet and wipe with real toilet paper. It felt marvelous, and she washed her hands in the sink with plenty of soap. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror then, the first time in over a month that she'd seen herself. She was shocked. El Shoua's hair was matted and shiny with grease. Curls were formed and stuck together in rat's nests, even though she'd tried to brush her fingers through it every day. Worse yet was her spotty, blotchy skin with its own half an inch of grease, streaked here and there with blood from where she'd run into something last night. She'd lost a lot of weight, she realized, staring into eyes set too deep into hollows too big for them. Altogether, she looked like a mess, a scary, nasty, dirty mess.

El Shoua washed her face, then washed her arms, then washed her elbows for good measure. She lifted up her arm and sniffed, grimacing. If there had been a tub or even a shower in this bathroom, she would have used it right then and there. As it was, she'd gone into the company half-bath, and the sink wasn't even big enough for her to sit up on to wash her legs in. El Shoua patted herself dry on dark towels, glad in an inane sort of way that she wasn't smearing her filth over pretty white ones.

Wandering into the house again, she noticed three things: one, everybody else was up, which she remembered had been the case when she'd stumbled toward the bathroom in half-memory from previous visits; two, all their blankets were folded and stacked in the corner (for half a minute, she thought that they'd been stolen, and she cursed her luck before she realized that there was nobody to steal her blanket here); three, there was a most delicious smell of food wafting toward her. El Shoua decided to follow her nose, and it led her right into the kitchen. Crowded around a tall kitchen table with bar stools -- and two high chairs, a really thoughtful addition -- was Dr. Afuha'amango and the twins, Grandpa, and Jasmina Ahmadi, Marl's tall, angular mother, a professor of ancient history at the University of Grant.

"We saved a plate for you," said Prof. Ahmadi. "Col went into work hours ago -- didn't want to wake you guys -- but you just missed Marl. He's gone back to school, but he waited for you." She got up and cleared away the remains of what El Shoua supposed was Marl's breakfast -- or lunch, judging from the time on the stove. It was already almost three in the afternoon.

"Don't worry," came a stage whisper from Grandpa. "We almost missed Marl, too."

"You guys were tired," said Prof. Ahmadi. "I wasn't about to rouse a body just because I was awake myself. I didn't spend all night running through woods and jumping over fences, already half-starved and near frozen. I figured I'd let you lie in today, and tomorrow you'll be up with the chickens."

As the Ahmadi's tiny ranch home didn't have any chickens for all it graced two and a half acres, El Shoua doubted her words. She smiled and sat down, letting herself be waited up by Prof. Ahmadi, whose sweet foreign accent graced all the familiar words she fired off. She'd been a teacher, too, newly come to Grant City when she'd met Col and married him. She had never lost the slow drawl of her old planet, even when she affected a clipped city accent. El Shoua had always liked her when they'd met. When she was small and first visited Grant City, Prof. Ahmadi's kitchen had been a haven from the scary crowds, filled with cookies and half-graded essays on ancient history.

"We been talkin'," said Grandpa. He glanced at Dr. Afuha'amango. "We're not sure we're safe yet."

Dr. Afuha'amango shook her head. "Al, you know we're not safe," she said, her voice strained and cracking. "You heard Jasmina just as I did. We're not safe on Grant Planet. They're out to get us, and nothing's going to stop them when they realize weren't there last night."

"Now who's sounding like a paranoid old codger?" countered Grandpa. "And here you were two minutes ago telling me I'm seeing shadows on the beach."

"That was before --"

"What're you talking about?" asked El Shoua. Surely everybody knew by now that they'd left the refugee camp last night. They weren't in any more danger than they were inside the camp, as far as she could tell. They could get caught, yes, but they were also hidden, at least for now. It evened out when compared with the conditions back there.

Prof. Ahmadi poured coffee into a mug, her lips a tight line slashed across her face. El Shoua took it and stared around her at the faces at the table. Even the twins looked troubled with jam smeared across their noses and dirty hair sticking straight up in some places. Dr. Afuha'amango radiated anger and seemed to be on the verge of furious tears. Grandpa looked simply resigned to telling her whatever it was that everybody else knew.

"There's another raid last night," said Grandpa. El Shoua gasped. "That's not the worst of it, girl. It was the camp. Burned it to the ground."

El Shoua's mind swirled with emotions. To think that the people who'd survived the Grant Town raid were thwarted so wholly only weeks later. She knew these people by sight and name, even if she hadn't been on close terms with them. El Shoua had slept next to dozens of strangers, huddled as close as decency would allow in the cold, until she privately rated some by their warmth. They'd survived the first raid only to die sleeping -- but, no, the ship was loud. That was how the Chintis played the game. They let you know you were coming, and the people must have been so scared, locked up like chattel and unable to get free.

She felt sick. El Shoua hoped that enough had had the sense of mind to scale the fence as they had done. If they had waited one more day to leave the refugee camp, they might not have come out of it whole or alive. Could she have helped Grandpa and the twins over the fence in the chaos and fear caused by the approaching ship? Would she have had thought to even bring her blanket? It had seemed silly last night to hold it there in the front room, but El Shoua knew that she would have missed it had she left it behind. She was so thankful that they'd gotten away when they had and so guilty that they hadn't brought more with them.

All those silly teenage girls and boys, posing for each other day in and day out with nothing to do -- what if none of them had survived? What if the babies were dead, too?

"The camp is ... gone?" she said.

"Destroyed with the same sort of chemical fire what took out Grant Town," said Grandpa. "Reckon what we thought was a search ship out last night was really the raider."

"That's not all you 'reckon,'" snarled Dr. Afuha'amango.

Grandpa snapped, slamming his hand down on the table. "Yeah, I reckon it wasn't really the Chintis that done the raiding," he cried. "Because it just ain't them. And I reckon you'll keep your mouth shut if you know what's best. Ain't nothing more that needs told, Lindy. And you, Jasmina, I reckon I'm grateful you came to me first." Grandpa calmed his voice. "I'm sorry for screaming at y'all, but you've gotta understand my side of the story."

"Wasn't the Chintis ...?" asked El Shoua. "But then who was it?"

"Us," said Prof. Ahmadi. "We think it was us. The government." She took a napkin to a twin and scrubbed, not looking up. "I've been hearing rumors for months, but you guys know me. Only hear what I want. I didn't want to hear this -- I've got friends -- I know people. And if I believed half of what was being said, some people I didn't want to know any more.

"Now this is just talk," she said, "but I place a lot of value on my sources, people I'll respect till I die. But the talk goes this way: I don't know if you've been following city politics the past few years, but you know we had our first alien elected in the agricultural department not too long ago." Here, Prof. Ahmadi paused and grinned. To her historian's eye, the fifteen years since that monumental election were nothing in the grand scheme of things. "An Azus named Sparku who got his start as a trader before the war ended. Made a lot of friends with his work, good prices, good stuff. Always willing to take the dangerous route for a shipment if it was the only way to get a load some place. Saved a lot of lives, filled a lot of bellies, especially here on Grant. I remember, he could get potatoes when nobody'd seen them for months."

"Filled a lot of bellies," said Grandpa. "Sparku was the only, and I mean the only, Azus on the peace committee. People trusted him. I voted for him myself in the last three elections when he ran for chairman. Half the stuff you could get from the humans was spoiled and rotten before you opened the seal. The other half lasted a week, maybe two, before you ran out of money. Helped make sense of a war we were fight' 'cause we traded with them. Lot of people said, why, if the Chintis didn't trade with no one who went with the Azus, it was because their prices was better and their meat rarer."

"And then the drought came," said Prof. Ahmadi. "And Sparku stepped up the plate, did the same magic tricks. People got fed at a decent price."

"No," said El Shoua. "The prices weren't decent in Grant Town. We didn't make enough to live off. We bought more food than we sold."

She didn't add that she'd taken her degree, pushing aside thoughts of further study, and marched into town for a job just so that they could feed themselves. The farm had done poorly in the drought, all of them did in the Grant Town area, and prices remained too low for El Shoua to stay home all day and read old books. She'd been afraid at first, terrified that she was going to fail, worried that it wouldn't be enough, but she'd found her place at the preschool and continued well enough that she'd been certain of a steady paycheck at least through the drought, even if it lasted another two, three years.

"Exactly," said Prof. Ahmadi. "The farms weren't doing well, everybody knew it, but people expected it. This drought claimed so many farms, it's a wonder anybody got fed. But Sparku did it, and he did it the same way he did in the war -- importing goods from off world. As more and more of his people got elected -- some human, some Azus, some neither -- into the government, his power expanded. He had connections everywhere, people to cover his tracks. Fuel prices have been going up for the past three years. I think part of it's to cover the fact that he's spending so much of our resources to ship in food."

"But fuel's been going down," said Grandpa. "People have been settling down -- but now the raid."

Prof. Ahmadi nodded took a long draught out of her mug and said, "It's a big one. It wiped out a whole community. Food prices have skyrocketed, fuel prices soared back up. And the raids an easy thing to blame it on. Too easy. They're starting to pass special referendums out of session -- you know about them legalizing the right to spy on citizens without a warrant. That's just one of it. There's talk that they're going to take away the right for jury by trial for anyone suspected of having helped the Chintis."

"It's just talk," said Dr. Afuha'amango angrily, breaking into the conversation. "I know some of the people you mean, and they can't have organized that raid. It was a massacre, Jasmina, plain and simple. And they're not behind these ridiculous invasions in our privacy -- it's a bunch of scared folks looking to protect us and going about it the wrong way. It was a massacre."

"And it was an easy way to kill two birds with one stone," snapped Prof. Ahmadi. "They needed a reason a disaster, and this was twofold. Raise fuel prices without people looking, keep the food cheap. Once there's a good enough reason to gouge the price of food, you can stop shipping it in. You can go as high as you want on fuel and start making a profit. And Grant Town was the perfect target -- for many reasons."

"You sound so xenophobic."

"Need I remind you, Lindy, that I don't come from your world? I don't have the same prejudices you people seem to be bred with, nor do I have the same hang-ups about expressing my opinions on someone who comes from a different background than I do. Grant Planet has a human population disproportionate to the rest of space. The planet couldn't have been settled if it weren't for the gains alien species offered humanity -- we got lucky in our friends. I'm saying that there is a bad man out there, not that all aliens are bad. Aren't you the one advocating the idea that we place all our blame on the Chintis?"

"They've been raiding planets for decades. Even you have to admit that."

"Small raids. Rubble and noise. Flashy engines, bright lights, very little ammunition actually used. They rassle up some cows, burn a few crops, maybe get a few casualties in by accident when they blasted the house. But people always knew they were coming -- the raiders had big, loud engines, almost like a warning."

"Chintis don't sneak around," said Grandpa. "And they don't kill with near so much indiscretion as we like to assign to them. We was scared when we heard the ship because we knew the barn'd get blown, and maybe the house, too. Newspapers said as much. And I was scared for my life. It was like being back in the war in a way. Don't know what come over me, but I worked on autopilot, wallowing in the mud, almost crying 'cause I didn't have a gun in my hands and two good legs beneath me. And if it had been a real raid, I would have laughed at myself. But it wasn't the Chintis, and it saved my life, acting like I did."

"Papers never pictured a house," recalled El Shoua. "Always farm buildings."

The image of the refugees trapped inside a fence as fire consumed them flashed through her minds. There had never been chemical attacks before the Grant Town raid, never been such devastation in the news feeds. If Prof. Ahmadi was right, and it was the fault of someone in the government --

Dr. Afuha'amango shot her a look that read like, Oh, not you, too, but she held her tongue.

"We're leaving Grant," said Prof. Ahmadi. "All of us, me and Col and Marl, and you guys. We're in the middle of nowhere, and this isn't the place to be when it comes time for war. We're backwards enough here that we'll be first in line come real combat. People will want to serve, to right the wrongs against Grant. And I think we're headed that way -- I think that's what this is has been leading up to. Not just Grant Planet is being brought into this conflict between the Azus and the Chintis."

"Hey, I was born here," said El Shoua, taking offense at hearing Grant Planet described as backwards.

"No you weren't," said Grandpa.

"Well, I grew up on Grant. It's not so bad."

"It really isn't that great, either," he said. "But there's a reason I came back home after the war -- Grant Planet has a lot to offer if you want a certain kind of life. We're backwards, Jasmina, but we also don't have skies gray with pollution and we're not fighting a growing population. There's plenty of space here for people to grow up in. Marl was lucky."

"Marl was very lucky, but I think he won't be so lucky when the draft starts. And neither will you be, El Shoua."

"You really think it's gonna happen? You really think that because we've got so many aliens --"

"So many people connected to Sparku," interrupted Prof. Ahmadi. "A lot of Azus, period. Maybe that does make me xenophobic, Lindy, to point that out. But I think there's a connection between this war and the last, and nobody can say that we would have been in the last if it weren't for the Azus. The Chintis threw up their blockades and stopped trading, but it was our relationship with the Azus that caused them to severe ties."

"They fired first at Riker's Nebula."

"I'm disappointed in you, El Shoua. I know that even in these schools they teach that nobody knows for certain who got the first shot off. The Chintis stopped trade with us, yes, but it doesn't mean that they wanted to go to a shooting war over it. They weren't in conflict with any number of other species they'd embargoed, were they? They stayed on their side of space, we stayed on ours. If you ask me, we should have just kept the peace from the beginning, ignored them as they ignored us. Instead, our arrogance led us into trying to defy their trade restrictions and get around them. That was the first shot in my opinion."

"All because Azulansan goods flooded the market with cheap prices," said Grandpa. "I remember when Papa brought home the satellite dish. Mama was so proud, we were the first people in Grant Town to get a dish. She'd always missed the news, always talking about how back home she'd never felt as cut off from the rest the space. Local news wasn't nothin' for her, and the Azus brought the worlds to her front room. Grant Planet didn't even have a news satellite until two years before that."

"Grant Planet wouldn't have been settled without the money the Azus brought a lot of folks," said Prof. Ahmadi. "They made people rich, even when the war started up. The Chinti weren't near as kind as to share so much technology with us. And now everywhere I look, things are made on Azulansa. What happens to people who don't have schooling and education? What happens to men and women who needs jobs like manufacturing to support their families? I've got friends off Grant who say it isn't so hot for the working man. Even our grain is processed off-world, Al. There aren't any mills here on Grant Planet. It's grown here, and it's eaten here, but it leaves and comes back in between.

"Grant can't support itself," she continued slowly. "If we were cut off from the rest of the planets, I'm not sure we'd know how to get by."

"But why Grant Planet?" asked El Shoua.

"Many reasons," said Dr. Afuha'amango, looking at her with a piercing gaze. "Most of them discussed here at this table today. I hate to agree with their delusion, but I have to. We have to leave the planet before something big happens here in Grant City itself. I'm not saying that everything fits into place as neatly as you would like to say it does, Jasmina, but I am saying that maybe it isn't a good idea to be this far away from the centralized worlds. Not if Grant Planet's a target -- from anyone."

Silence followed her words. El Shoua couldn't quite wrap her mind around everything that had been said. Mostly, she dwelled on the thought of leaving home. Even at the refugee camp, even leaving it, El Shoua had always known that the farm was waiting for her, even if it were charred ruins of what she'd known. Since she was five years old, she had lived on that farm with Grandpa and Aunt Ellen. They'd raised her without question, even during difficult days when they could have sent her off to another relative or away to a foster home. El Shoua had lost her aunt, but losing the farm -- for good -- was almost more abstract to her.

She'd learned that people died, and that was the end of it. Her parents had died before she was old enough to remember them, died even before she was old enough to understand what it meant. She'd been eight years old when she asked, for the first time since the difficult year right after coming to live on the farm, if her parents were ever going to come and get her. It'd shocked her to hear that they were dead, and it had saddened her to realize that she had forgotten it, somehow, had replaced their love with the love that her great-grandmother, grandfather, and aunt gave her.

But places were forever. The haunts she'd created as a kid were always going to be there. Leaving them would be like a different kind of dying, suicide from the skies that blanketed her dreams and the earth they'd battled every year for a good crop. She didn't know another land, didn't know a sea or mountain, had never tasted snow on the wind. If they left Grant Planet, they might not ever be able to come back, or at least wouldn't for many years. Grandpa could die and be buried away from his family, away from his wife, daughter, and parents. Aunt Ellen was the only one of his three children who'd felt the pull of the land back to Grant after she'd served -- Big Mama had stayed on the planet even after Big Papa had passed away -- somewhere on the farm there was a cemetery with four generations of family pets.

All of these things were irreplaceable, and even though she'd never met Grandma or Big Papa, even though her memories of Big Mama were clouded with a preteen's understanding of death, she knew the stories of Grandpa's childhood like she could tell her own, knew Big Papa's first year breaking the soil and all his labors like the myth of Hercules. El Shoua knew that Grandma's favorite flowers grew on the west side of the house, and every year they placed a bouquet at her grave before they tended to its maintenance. If they left, who would make sure her marker was free from climbing ivy?

Grandpa was clearing the table free of the remains of their brunch, and El Shoua couldn't help but think it was a shame that the Ahmadis didn't have a compost pile where the plates could be scraped. Instead, they were emptied into the sink and a switch flipped so that the garbage disposal could start grinding it down into smaller pieces. The dishwasher was half-full already with frying pans and dirty pots, but Grandpa had had Aunt Ellen to train in him the art of finding the perfect spot for that last dish, and soon it was gurgling through the wash cycle. El Shoua noticed that it wasn't Azulansan made.

"Well," said Prof. Ahmadi, "I'm going to start packing my bags. I should have started weeks ago -- but Col wasn't sure he wanted to leave until last night, you know how he can be. I wasn't about to leave without him, no matter how scared I was. The second raid -- it's what did him in." She sighed. "Can't bring much. Don't have time or money enough."

"I'm lucky," said El Shoua. "I don't have to leave anything behind, not even my blanket."

Grandpa laughed, and even Dr. Afuha'amango smiled wanly.

*

El Shoua felt much better after she'd showered and changed into some clean clothes. Everybody was helping Prof. Ahmadi pack the essentials into four cardboard boxes and three pieces of luggage -- one for each member of her family. They were daring to leave openly but quietly, unwilling to attract attention. Marl had thrown out some clothes onto his bed (El Shoua peeked her head in there but didn't enter, feeling like it would be an invasion of privacy), and he would be home soon to gather up his most important personal affects for the move.

The others were to go as passengers to a neighboring system with nothing more than a couple of canvas bags between them, leaving on a shuttle thirty minutes after the Ahmadis. It was safer to look as if they were only visitors or vacationers, either on their way to or from home. Dr. Afuha'amango's friends had already arranged for their passage, and in El Shoua's bra next to her ID was a ticket and another, false identification card with the name Olibia Marquez. It was an old-fashioned name and made her smile. Between them all, they were not able to fill up their bags, not even with the clothing that the Ahmadis and their rescuers had given them.

The television was on all day long, filled with reports of the second raid and the rescue efforts that were underway. There was a number scrolling constantly along the bottom of the screen telling anybody to report a lost and wandering refugees. El Shoua saw still images of young people, filthy enough after the raid on the camp that it was almost disgusting to see, surrounded by sharp looking officials corralling them into vehicles. For their safety, the reporters said.

"Here," said Prof. Ahmadi from the depths of her walk-in closet. "I have some bags and purses that you two can take -- you know I won't have room for them. They'll help make you look more like you aren't running from the refugee camp. And you'll need to find a new razor for Al -- that beard may hide his face, but it makes him stand out, especially with all those patchy things the boys from the camps grew. We should think about cutting your hair, too. You can't get all those snarls out, and it's singed in some places."

"The boys have been needing a haircut," replied Dr. Afuha'amango, reaching out to pull her fingers through El Shoua's curls. "We could shave one and clip the other. People notice twins more than they notice two little boys. Better be Tamiano, though. I think Salesi has a funny-shaped head. He needs that hair to balance it out."

El Shoua went through the purses that were now in a pile at her foot. Prof. Ahmadi had dozens, maybe about fifty total, in all sorts of styles and sizes. There were some obviously very expensive ones, and El Shoua whistled softly to herself, sorting them out in an almost random system of style. Dr. Afuha'amango chose a medium-sized one with a designer label, and it looked like it'd been made to be carried by her. El Shoua mentally added to the list of things to do the task of cutting and cleaning their nails.

"Thanks for putting all my ratty purses to one side," teased Prof. Ahmadi.

"Oh," said El Shoua. "I just thought those were your favorites."

She picked up a green bag from that pile that looked like it was large enough to carry groceries in if it were put to the test. It zipped up across the top pocket and had lots of smaller pockets outside and in. There was a paper crumpled up at the bottom of the bag, and when she pulled it out she saw that it was a half-graded essay on the founding of Grant Planet.

"So he did turn it in on time!" exclaimed Prof. Ahmadi. "And I docked him twenty points for being late. Good choice, Shoua. I used that bag for two years to bring home my papers from school. You know, I could fit in there myself if I were ten pounds lighter. Just make sure you use the pockets -- finding things at the bottom of that purse was a futile act, as poor Shamal's paper shows."

El Shoua pulled the bag close to her and sniffed. It smelled like coffee and eraser. She loved it.

The front door slammer, causing them all to jump. Grandpa was watching the boys, but if one of them had run out the front door, they might be seen by some neighbors. Dr. Afuha'amango scurried out of the room, calling the boys' names, and El Shoua threw the strap of the bag over her neck and shoulders and followed her with Prof. Ahmadi.

But it wasn't an errant twin -- it was Marl, home from class and looking much more like his normal self than he'd had last night. His upturned nose was sniffing the air expectantly, and he said with no little joviality, "I think somebody's showered."

"Oh, shut up," said El Shoua. She winced when she remembered how she'd looked last night. Weeks ago she'd started being able to smell herself, and weeks ago she'd lost the ability to smell even that. "Do you know we're leavin' tonight? You couldn't have stayed home from school?"

"Semester ended today. I had my last final. I wasn't about to miss that just to stay home and pack my stuff. Hey, Ma. Think I aced it."

"Dad'll be home in a few minutes to start dinner," said Prof. Ahmadi. "Try to get as much packed as possible between now and then, Marl. We have tickets for the ten o'clock shuttle, and you know we've got to get there early. There won't be much time after dinner to sort through all your things, and I don't know when we'll be able to send for them. Oh, and take out the trash, please? You know that movers always bundle it up with the rest of your stuff, and you end up opening boxes that sat next to it and finding everything permeated with the smell of rotten milk."

"I know," said Marl, managing to inflict his voice perfectly like his mother's. "Come on, Shoua, tell me about what happened between handing me your dog and cigarettes, and I'll fill you in on world outside the camp. By the way, didn't know you smoked."

El Shoua groaned. So that's what had happened to her things. She didn't remember meeting Marl, but there was a lot in the early days that El Shoua couldn't quite recall. Until she'd seen Panya dancing on her hind legs in the Ahmadi house, El Shoua had half-suspected that her dog had ended up as somebody's dinner in the camp. Knowing how dirty and disgusting she'd been was embarrassing. It wasn't exactly her fault, but El Shoua couldn't help but wish she'd gotten a few more wash cloth baths in at the refugee camp.

Marl's room was plain, white walls and cork board with a few pictures and notes thumb tacked to it. The ceiling was twelve feet high, and there were tall, wide sets of windows on two walls. Marl went right to his desk in the corner by a window and opened the top drawer. It was filled two inches deep with memory sicks, some with printed labels, some handwritten on in permanent markers, others blank but obviously well-used. El Shoua handed him the bag off his bed, and Marl began scooping out stick after stick. When he was finished, he sealed the bag and tossed it on his bed.

"Well, I'm done."

"Is that all your taking?"

"I don't have anything else I'd miss. Everything important to me is in this room."

The way Marl said it made El Shoua's stomach twist in the same way it had for the past two years, ever since she'd noticed the change in his attitude in her and his marked attention. Her Aunt Ellen had been pleased with Marl's interest, but El Shoua had never encouraged or even welcomed it. She stared at him, noting how his eyes were too far apart and how his nose turned up just a little too much. With such an attractive mother, you'd think he'd be at least decent looking.

She realized too late that he'd taken her scrutiny the wrong way; Marl was leaning closer and closer to her, his head turned and his eyes full of teasing. With his head turned that way, it was like he only had one eye at all. El Shoua closed her eyes, thinking that at least she would be leaving Marl Ahmadi for the time being. It wouldn't hurt to give him something, even if she suspected he knew how fruitless his labors actually were.

He kissed well, practiced, and a shot of anger ran through El Shoua. He had obviously not been pining away for here while she was stuck down on the farm. She'd kissed a few boys in her day, but none of them were as sweet about it as Marl was. She almost convinced herself, half-longing, that this was something she wanted for real. They broke apart after only a few seconds and put their foreheads together, staring at the floor. She was glad that the kiss wasn't a complete disaster, and she was a little disappointed that she hadn't felt any sparks or tingles. Marl was still Marl, the boy who'd pushed her in the mud countless times and laughed when she'd gotten lost in Grant City for three hours.

It was something nice to remember him by, she decided. Years later she could call him her childhood sweetheart and tease people about never living up to the standard he'd set. Right now, she grabbed his hand and thought about how comforting it was to have somebody her own age here -- somebody who was probably just as confused and scared as she, even if he was a million times better at containing himself. She worried about Grandpa and Dr. Afuha'amango and the boys so much sometimes that it felt really good to have someone whom she didn't have to watch out for.

"I'm scared," said El Shoua softly. "And everybody else is, too."

"We'll find each other after and laugh at how scared everybody was. We'll come home when nothing's happened and look like idiots, and we'll fall back into our old lives."

"I don't have an old life. It's burned. It's gone. It's not coming back, just like Aunt Ellen. I don't have a life anymore. I'm just running for it. If I lost everything, everyone, I don't know how I'd keep going. I have to keep going so I don't lose them."

Marl wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed. He didn't say anything, probably because there wasn't really anything to say to something like that. If El Shoua had made friends with the kids at the refugee camp, even though they were five and six years younger than she was, would she have been happier there? Could sharing her hurt with something who knew without knowing have made it easier for her to deal with? And now the refugees were mostly dead or wandering around, waiting to be caught again and put into another camp. If Prof. Ahmadi was right, their suffering -- her suffering -- wasn't the result of some random Chinti raid gone horribly wrong but instead the careful plan of someone in the government.

Even just the thought of it sent chills up and down her body. Grant Town had been expendable, its people useful only as casualties. The thought that there might be someone out there actively looking for them was a real possibility -- not El Shoua and Grandpa specifically, but all Grant Town refugees. She didn't understand how it could have gotten to this point and why it was allowed to happen. The Azus had always been the friendly aliens, the ones who went out of their way to help everybody with whatever they had. There was a saying: An Azus would give you his breath if he could, and it was true. There weren't many who lived full-time on Grant Planet, and those who did invariable lived in Grant City, but everybody just knew that you could trust an Azus to cover your back with his own shirt.

Leaving Grant Planet meant one thing -- getting off a world where, sooner or later, someone would figure out that you were a refugee. Even if going to a more centralized planet meant that there would be more aliens, it would be easier to blend in, get lost in the crowds. They had enough money in hand, nothing locally minted, to hope shuttle as soon as they landed from the first and go further away from their home world. El Shoua wondered how far across the whole space they'd go before she'd feel safe from being recognized as a homeless refugee without a possession in the world.

She heard Prof. Ahmadi call for them from the other room. El Shoua dropped Marl's hand, and they stepped away from each other, grinning awkwardly. When they entered the front room, it was to find that an impromptu salon had been set up. Grandpa had been shaved -- probably in the bathroom -- and his hair cut neatly. She could see his ears, and the whiskers that'd scratched her when she'd kissed her cheek were gone. Dr. Afuha'amango had gotten a cut, too, and six inches of long black mane was scattered across the floor. She was finishing up on one of the twins, trimming his hair back above his ears and slapping his hands when he reached up to investigate things. Prof. Ahmadi was playing with the other boy, now shaven bald. Behind her, Mr. Ahmadi was sitting on the couch with an amused expression on his face. El Shoua was glad to see that he didn't seem as tense as he had the night before.

"Oh my goodness," said El Shoua. "We're going to have to use the broom on that. This would totally blow out your vacuum."

"You're next," said Dr. Afuha'amango. "I'm thinking something about as long as your grandfather's."

El Shoua put her hands to her thick hair. It was curly, but there was so much of it -- length and density -- that it hung only in waves, nearly to hear waist. She'd washed it three or four times in the shower, then conditioned it nearly twice as many, trying to get first the grime and then the tangles out of it. She couldn't have told anyone the last time she'd had more than a trim on her hair. Surely it was grown out since she first moved to the farm? The idea of getting it all cut off made her apprehensive, like it was too much to lose in so short a period of time.

"Um, maybe we could braid it," she offered. "And then pin it up. I really don't want to cut it off."

"You'd be surprised at how different it can make you look," said Prof. Ahmadi with a KNOWING NOD. "There's not too many girls that have hair as long as yours, but the pixie cut is a dime a dozen."

"I'll think about it. Maybe after dinner, okay?"

"Speaking of!" said Mr. Ahmadi, getting off the couch. "I should check on the eggs. It's sandwiches tonight, folks."

As he went into the kitchen, there came a long knock on the door. El Shoua's heart dropped into her toes. Who was on the other side of the door? Could they be looking for them? Or was it somebody just warning the neighbors about the refugees that were missing? There was no way that they could hide the products of their little haircutting session, and there was too much of it to be anybody in the house's hair, not even Prof. Ahmadi's.

El Shoua bent to her knees and frantically started gathering up the loose strands, whispering, "Let's go, let's go, let's hide."

"Don't worry," said Prof. Ahmadi as she made her way out of the front room and to the door. "You're visiting friends. A family. No whole families survive the massacre."

"What are they, my children?" snapped El Shoua irritably, dropping an armful of hairs.

"You little slut," said Marl. "At least you were above age when you had them. Am I supposed to be their father?"

"Wouldn't you like to know!"

The room quieted and stared as Prof. Ahmadi peered out the window by the door side with her hand on the knob. Muttering, she turned it. A woman with short, dark hair was on the other side, and she stepped into the house and closed the door before anybody had any chance to say anything. She was dressed for traveling: boots, a sweater, a jacket over her shoulder, even black leather gloves that went just past her wrist. The shock in the room was palpable, and El Shoua was holding her breath.

She had a calm, trenchant manner about her, as if everything she did had been decided in advance and there was no other way for her

"Thank you," said the woman, handing her jacket to Prof. Ahmadi. She stepped passed her and came into the front room. "Admiral. I was worried you were dead, man."

"Deum Daly," said Grandpa. El Shoua's jaw dropped. Admiral? From the looks around the room, it was clear that nobody else had known either. Mr. Ahmadi was standing in the dining room, egg slicer in his hand. "You look the same as the day I last saw you. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I think you know," said Deum Daly. "It's the best thing for everyone. And -- and I need help, and I may as well combine the two efforts, yeah?"

"Daly --" began Grandpa.

"You can't say no. You've seen what's happened. Heretofore it was safe for you, but no longer is that the case. They were willing to kill a whole community just for one person. If they find out they didn't succeed, and they will, they're going to come back. You can't run from them, not together. I have to do this. It's only right, Admiral. Sir, we made a deal twenty years ago. Are you backing out now?"

"If I said yes?"

"Then you're a coward who lets his heart get in the way of his safety. A stupid coward, one who gets himself killed."

"What's going on?" asked Prof. Ahmadi. "Who are you -- why did you just walk into my house? Al, what's going on?"

Grandpa stood up and reached across to shake the stranger's hand. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he turned to face Prof. Ahmadi, who was still on her foyer. "Jasmina," he said. "This is Daly. She knew my son before he died. She brought El Shoua to me."

As the woman wasn't much older than El Shoua herself, she thought it likely that Daly had been very young during these times. If she had even been in the war, she had lied about her age. She didn't look older than twenty-five, so El Shoua was giving her ten more years as the benefit of the doubt. That someone who was obviously so junior to her grandfather seemed to be on good speaking terms with him even if it was, to her at least, an admiral was insane. She wondered why she had never heard anything about Daly, who had taken her to the farm. She didn't remember her, didn't even remember being taken by anywhere by anyone who wasn't her family.

"Then she's...she's a Chinti," said Dr. Afuha'amango, putting and hand on each of the boys' shoulders and drawing them close to her. "She's a Chinti soldier."

El Shoua felt cold and hot in spots all over her body. She had never before seen a Chinti. She'd always imagined that they looked just as foreign, just as alien, as the other species that she knew of. But this Daly woman looked human! She wasn't sandy brown, and she definitely wasn't blue. El Shoua's eyes flew down to the woman's left hand and thought she spied a bulge in the glove where a third thumb might be hidden. That three-thumbed Chintis looked so human was shocking to her. It didn't make any sense at all, none of it. Why would her grandfather know this Chinti, and why would she have brought El Shoua to him twenty years ago?

"What the heck is going on?" she asked. "This is some crazy stuff -- somebody needs to start explaining, or I'm gonna walk outside and hand myself into the nearest official, okay?"

The Chinti leaned over and put a very strong hand on El Shoua's knee. It was like having a vice grip on her knee, and El Shoua could feel the blood pulsing just above the hand.

"I'd hate to have to knock you unconscious," she said. "But I'm really very good at it. You wouldn't feel a thing. So I suggest that you stop that thought before it ferments into something dangerous to your health, yeah?"

"Don't threaten her," said Grandpa in a low, menacing voice that El Shoua had never heard him use before. "I'm telling you here, once. Don't ever threaten her again."

"Tell her not to threaten herself. She wants to get herself killed, I'd rather be the one left with her body. I didn't come all this way to have some twenty-year-old brat walk out on me and get herself caught."

"I'm twenty-two," said El Shoua petulantly. "And all I want are some answers. Who are you, what are you doing here, and why do you want to take my grandpa away? Why is he an admiral? Since when?"

"I don't want to take your grandfather away."

"Oh, good. Glad that's settled."

"I'm taking you."

"Wait, what? Back up here."

Grandpa crossed over to El Shoua and sat down beside her on the couch, putting his arm around her much like he'd put his arm around Daly. El Shoua scrunched up close to him and willed herself to be younger or older or smarter or dumber -- anything than what she was here, now, understanding and confused.

"Girl," said Grandpa. "There's not much I've told you about your dad. Even less I've told you about your mama."

"They died in the war," said El Shoua. "They met in the war. They died in the war. You raised me. You -- you're an admiral."

"People got a lot of promotions they didn't deserve back then," said Grandpa. "I left that behind a long time ago. The last time anybody ever called me admiral, they was handing a little girl with yellow curls over to me and tellin' me to take care of her. And I did, I hope. I hope I took care of you, El Shoua, even though I couldn't always get you want you wanted."

El Shoua's eyes stung with hot tears. She felt her face crumble and then tighten as she sewed herself shut against crying. Even so, her voice broke when she spoke.

"I never needed for nothin'. Grandpa, what is this about? Who is Daly? Why does she want to take me? Grandpa, please."

"It's about your mama, girl. I don't rightly know how to put this. Your mama -- she was an important woman. Had a high rank. When she married Duke, she did it in secret. He was only a lieutenant, the talk would have been monstrous big. And your mama and Duke, they was so happy when they had you. Sent us pictures, letters, videos. Never saw two people more in love with their own child. It bordered a little on hubris, and it got back to them."

"They died," said El Shoua. "In the war."

"They died because they wanted peace. Your mama, she was pushing for it, and somebody didn't like that. It happened at y'all's house. I don't even know how you survived -- it was gone, burned and melted and just devastated. Never saw anything more sickening in my life, not even during the war. But I guess those times my son wasn't in it when it happened. But he was, and for a while there, I thought you'd been killed, too. Damn near broke my heart to think of that, and I'd never even met you.

"But then Daly came with you, and you was just a tiny thing, small-like, and I damn near broke my heart again to think about how I had this chance with you, how we all did. Elly was back, and I think you were the only thing that kept her from going completely crazy. The war was hard on her, as hard as it could get without killing you, and you were so damn good to us. Every day, El Shoua, you've been so damn good to us. I'll never be more thankful than that day, not even when you count up all the days after. You reached for Elly, and you cried until she held you. Do you know how good you were for us?"

El Shoua couldn't hold back the wave of tears.

"I miss her, Grandpa. I miss her every day."

"I know. But I gotta tell ya something, something I didn't explain. The reason why your mom and dad had to marry in secret, it wasn't just because of their ranks. They could have gotten over that if things had been different. But they weren't, girl, and you're the biggest secret out of the whole thing. Your mama -- your mom wasn't human."

El Shoua was so shocked that she sucked something slimy down her windpipe and coughed for several seconds.

"What?" she asked. "Wasn't human? My mother was alien. My mother was an alien. Then I'm alien? I'm not human? What the hell am I? Azus? Was my mother an Azus?"

"No," said Daly. "You're Chinti."

"Well, that's just great."

"Understatement of the year," said Dr. Afuha'amango. "I'm surprised you didn't wake up this morning when Al told us. To say the least, we were shocked as hell."

To hear Dr. Afuha'amango cuss was almost as interesting as finding out that she had been the last person to know that she was an alien. El Shoua fell back against the cushions of the couch and glared at everybody in the room. Even Salesi and Tamiano had heard before her that her mother had been a Chinti. Suddenly, she felt as if she had been duped her whole life by everybody she'd ever known. El Shoua hated being the last in on a joke, hated being made to feel ridiculous, hated how she couldn't breathe right now.

"But I'm not ... blue. Or brown."

"She was mixed," said Daly. "Technically blue and thumbed, in foreign terms."

"I'm a mutt," said El Shoua. "I'm a mutt. The only one of my kind in the whole space! Didn't they think before they had me, how hard it was going to be growing up half alien? If anybody ever heard that I was half Chinti, they'd probably kill me."

"That's what the raids were for," said Dr. Afuha'amango in a cackle. "Don't think they've succeeded yet."

El Shoua felt like all the snot her crying had produced had suddenly drained into her lungs. Her throat contracted, she coughed. The conversation over the kitchen table that afternoon suddenly made much more sense. Dr. Afuha'amango had been referring to her when she was talking about it being dangerous. Prof. Ahmadi had been alluding to El Shoua when she was listing reasons why anyone would want to raid Grant Town. Chintis and Azus were mortal enemies. The animosity between their two species went back so far, their fights weren't even over those things anymore, just over things like trade and territory.

All those people had died because of El Shoua. The Azus in charge of the government had found out about her, and they'd decided to... what was it Prof. Ahmadi had said? Kill two birds with one stone. Maybe they'd even known about her all along and had been searching for twenty years to find her. The last place you look is always where it's at, and El Shoua had been a long way away from the centralized planets. There were plenty of war orphans; she wasn't the only child in her school raised by grandparents or other family members. That didn't make her stand out in the least.

"How did they find me?"

"They found your father," said Daly. "We're not sure how -- we'd taken care to ... clean up ... after the explosion. But after they found Duke..." She shrugged. "It was only a matter of time. I begged the admiral when he took you to relocate, to change his name. But he wouldn't leave Grant. And now, sir, you have to, and you can't take her with you."

"My parents were buried together," said Grandpa. "And when my time comes, I hope the same happens for me."

"That'll be in a long time, old man. But ... I promise. If you leave now, without the girl, I promise that when the time comes, you'll be back on Grant next to your wife. If you leave with her now, I guarantee you'll all be stopped before you board a shuttle. Before tomorrow, you will have died in the second raid."

"They wouldn't do that," cried El Shoua.

"They would! Don't you know what you are? More than anything, you are a threat to the Azus hold on humanity! Have you ever seen another half-human, even once? Have you heard of one, read of one in school? The species is too disparate from the rest of the space to provide for that feat -- but a Chinti and a human fell in love and created a child, worked toward peace together for her sake. You are a monstrosity in their eyes, a crime against their way of life. The Azus hate the Chinti, and we them, and nothing has ever changed that. You will be killed if you are discovered."

"I'll come clean, then. I'll go to the media, I'll take a DNA test."

"You think your friends will remember what a sweet girl you were," said Daly, her voice mocking and incredulous. "Do you think they won't hate you? Do you think you'll be welcomed with open arms? The Azus have their fist around humanity's throat, collectively squeezing every ounce of hatred and bigotry out of you and focusing it against the Chinti. The raids on Grant Town residents, these weren't the only ones that didn't have a Chinti thumb print. And they'll blame them on you, on us, and everything the Azus did will fall on our shoulders, and you will still die. You will have been killed, publicly, and we would have had the fingers of a countless mourners who grew in the wake pointing at us, demanding reparation."

"The Chinti'd be the monsters," said Grandpa, "because what sort of people kill a body for coming into this world? And what sort of people do it to their own?"

Daly turned to Grandpa, her face a studied picture of serenity that made El Shoua want to slap her. This woman, this alien came in here talking in three syllables and wanted to kidnap El Shoua for her own nefarious purposes. What use was hiding El Shoua away from the world going to be to anybody? Everything that her parents had worked for was rendered meaningless each day that she was tucked away in a corner, out of sight and out of mind. But did El Shoua have a choice? Could she selfishly turn her back on everything that she'd learned and demand to stay with her grandfather, even if it meant that they could die?

Her mind raced with possibilities, ways to hide and to stay hidden with Grandpa, ways to keep living her life, but it all boiled down to the fact that everything she'd experienced and heard in the past few days, not to mention the past month, scared the living hell out of her. She couldn't look Prof. Ahmadi in the eye and tell her, no, sorry, you might have heard some office rumors, but I know better. El Shoua didn't know better, or at least she knew enough to trust whatever Prof. Ahmadi said that made her so willing to pack up a bag and a few boxes and leave her life indefinitely.

She had to do it. To keep her grandfather safe, she had to leave without him.

"I have a plan," said Daly slowly. "I can end this -- end the war. But I need El Shoua alive, and she has to come with me for that. So I'm asking you, admiral. Will you trade your future happiness for your current? It means the world for how soon I have to take care of that promise, sir."

With a chill like thousands of spiders crawling across her skin, El Shoua watched Grandpa nod his head once.

"No!" she cried, forgetting her earlier promise to herself. "No, I won't leave you!"

"Shoua, they know who you are! They know I'm with you, and they know who I am. The only chance of us ever finding peace is to leave each other -- just for now. I promise you, just like Daly promised me, we will be together when this is over. And I don't mean six feet under, neither. I'll find you, you'll find me, and we'll be a family between then and now."

"You're giving me away."

"You gotta grow up sometime, El Shoua. I can't give or take you away. Time you figured out you're not a little kid. I got along without you before, and I'll get along without you now. I can't be the center of your world no more. You gotta find your own place in space without me holding your hand."

El Shoua's world had ended too many times for her to feel the brute force of his words wholly. Instead, she bowed her head and stared at her hands, her nails chipped and peeling. She didn't know if she could hide now that she knew herself in her entirety, but El Shoua could try.

"Is this good-bye?" she asked Daly.

"Yes. I'm sorry. We should go."

"I have some things --"

"I have clothes on my ship, we can buy more later. Bring only that which you find irreplaceable."

El Shoua realized that she had everything on her person that was important to her; three ID cards, each stepping slightly away from her true self; her boots; the bag that she was given by Prof. Ahmadi. Even at her feet, curled up on the blanket that she'd guarded for a month, lay Panya, ready to go. El Shoua leaned over to her grandfather and buried her face into his shoulder, sniffing the tangy smell that was uniquely him, even after a long shower and strong soap. She didn't cry, but she held on to him in a tight hug, trying to conceal all her worries and fears as well as she hid her face. There was no one left in the world who knew or loved her as much as Grandpa did, no one. And she was the only person left who could relate first person accounts of his mother, his daughter, her Big Mama and Aunt Ellen. Family was a bond created through more than love; it was shared experiences and memories kept tight that held it together.

"I'm bringing my dog," she said. Daly looked as if she were going to argue before she nodded, slowly.

El Shoua stood. Those who had been sitting also rose to their feet, staring awkwardly around at each other. Nobody had expected the farewells to be so soon. Nobody was prepared or knew what to say. Somehow El Shoua thought that this was better. It wasn't forced or stilted or full of practiced platitudes. She had cried, they had watched, it had gotten out of their systems. Her show was closing, the audience would leave, and it would open tomorrow to a new critic, unknown and untested. El Shoua wasn't sure she knew how to play her.

Daly reached out her hand and shook Grandpa. He took it like he took a man's, in both of his and halfway up her arm. Daly nodded her head once in respect, and El Shoua marveled at the way this creature deferred to her grandfather. What had it been like him during the war when he'd earned admiralty and left it behind? There were so many things that she wouldn't be able to ask him now, things that swelled up inside of her and refused to burst out. It was like something was physically holding her back and willing her not to say anything, telling her that silence would be the only good here.

El Shoua went around and hugged the twins in one big hug, then turned to Dr. Afuha'amango. She was obviously still unsettled over the day's events, and El Shoua was especially grateful when she thought about how troubled she'd seemed over the kitchen table and how natural and easy with El Shoua she'd been later in the day. She'd gotten over whatever misgivings she'd had about El Shoua's heritage, even though the thought of the massacres undoubtedably lurked in her mind. For that kindness, El Shoua was kind in return. This woman was like a grandmother to her in a strange way, and the boys were like younger brothers. She had only known them for a week, but a lifetime of experiences had tied them together. She was leaving family here, too.

The Ahmadis were no less difficult for her to say good-bye to. El Shoua had known them since she'd come to the farm. When she'd walked up to the preschool and handed in her application, wasn't some small part of her proud that she was, in some way, following in Prof. Ahmadi's footsteps? And hadn't she learned to ride a bike to the tune of Marl's relentless teasing? Col Ahmadi had given her flowers on her twelfth birthday and told her how beautiful she'd looked, and she'd learned to blush when walking down the street with Prof. Ahmadi and all the heads turned their way. It hadn't been for her, but Prof. Ahmadi had pretended it was, and years later there was nobody who could ignore the obvious crush Marl was developing on El Shoua quite the way she could.

Everybody she loved and who loved her was in this room, even the memory of Aunt Ellen and her grumpy, grouchy ways. It was luck, pure luck that they were all together like this, and it was chance's choice to tear them apart again. El Shoua scooped up Panya and held her close on her shoulder, following Daly down the hall. She tried to walk steadily and to make her back ramrod straight. It would be better that way than looking behind her at the silhouettes standing still in the background.

The sunshine outside was too bright for her the moment the door was opened by Daly. El Shoua blinked as she stepped through, feeling dizzy and out of sorts. Panya barked when the door slammed shut behind them.

"Where's your car?" asked El Shoua.

"Couldn't get it through the gate."

The walk down the gravel drive was silent. El Shoua had made this walk many times, had run races from the gate to the front door on countless evenings, but it seemed different when it was walking away from the house than when it was walking toward it. The rocks slipped in place and caught uncertainly at the slick, worn bottoms of her boots. A fine dust was blown by the wind in swirling tornadoes that Daly merely walked through.

It was all so very different, and El Shoua knew that her walk wasn't over, that her family was standing at the windows that sided the door and were watching her disappear down the drive. She couldn't break down here and look back even once, and neither could she fall into tears once they reached the street, for fear the neighbors would be around and would see. It was better, she reminded herself, but it felt infinitely worse to think that she was bound by rules so unfair and cruel. She was not a soldier in a war; El Shoua was a young woman in a world torn apart by war. There was, she liked to think, a difference somewhere.

They slipped through the gatehouse door, customarily left unlocked even in the family's turmoil. They were trusting people who had deep misgivings contradictory to their nature. El Shoua trailed a hand behind her as she closed the door, locking the outside door before it closed. At least there was that last barrier she could erect to protect them. Grandpa could be sick, and the twins might be recognized, but she could stop any more unwanted guests from barging onto the property.


	4. Chapter 4

The shuttle bay was a long expanse of square buildings before a large concrete field with dozens of parked shuttles. She marveled at size and noise of it. Panya barked and barked at the shuttles taking off and landing. Daly again left the car, telling El Shoua to stay put, and when she came back she had three big plastic containers and a trolley. It was time to pack everything they could into these containers.

When it was all said and done, they only needed one container, even with all that they'd purchased. They used the bags and boxes left over as a sort of packing material to buffer their items, then loaded everything onto the cart. Daly returned the two empty containers, then wheeled their things to the baggage area. She signed a slip, was handed one in return, and then led El Shoua and Panya to board.

They were a little early. The shuttle was only half full, but the people were very diverse. El Shoua saw families, looking tired and sunburnt (nobody had told them that winter sun could be as cruel or crueler than summer sun, she guessed). Businesspeople in suits wandered passed looking annoyed when they spotted Panya; young men and women stood near the windows and watched other shuttles take off; older people sat very still in seats, already buckled.

Finally it came time to launch. Even Panya had her own seat with a special harness to keep her locked down tight -- Daly informed her that the last minute purchase had cost her enough for a second night in the hotel room. El Shoua spent five minutes making sure all her straps were adjusted correctly and tightly fastened, aware that Daly had done herself and the dog up in half the time. As the attendant came by checking all the straps and speaking, through a throat-mic that fed into the intercom, of the safety procedures, El Shoua began to get a little nervous. She had never flown before, not even in a shuttle bus or hovering car, and the thought of breaking atmosphere was dizzying.

The attendant handed everybody a pill to contain their nausea. Panya ate hers, a special sort that was supposed to knock her out, without a thought because she was greedy, and El Shoua took hers with water. Daly stared at hers with a bemused expression and put it into her jean pocket. As Daly had taken a shuttle from the station to Grant Planet, El Shoua assumed that she was mulling over human weakness in low gravity.

The take-off was worse than El Shoua had expected. The entire shuttle rattled and shook and made noise and sent Panya into a bout of barking frenzy. Trying to calm the dog down was at least distracting for El Shoua, and before she realized it they were in the clouds. She looked out the window once and would have gotten sick if she hadn't already been medicated. Less than a minute of exhausting barking later, Panya was asleep, twitching, and they were flying smoothly upward in a long arc. El Shoua could feel the pull on her like being in a long elevator ride.

It took only five minutes before they were staring out into space, temporary residents of the welkin world. Breaking atmosphere was almost unnoticeable; the gravity difference had steadied out to a vague, half-floating feeling, like they were in a wading pool and could just barely skim their feet on the bottom. They gathered speed in space, making their way for the station. Gravity was wholly artificial here and only partially applied; the resulting feeling was much like going down an elevator.

A long scratching noise jarred El Shoua from staring out the window. She looked over at Daly, terrified that something had gone wrong, but Daly only smiled slightly and inclined her head toward the attendant. They had docked, and the noise El Shoua had heard was only the normal noises of connecting to the station. She felt a bit like an idiot for being so scared. The attendant was explaining how to unbuckle and disembark; it was easier than it sounded. Even bogged down with Panya in her arms, she managed to make her way with Daly to the exit.

The gravity was higher off the shuttle. El Shoua's first foot onto the space station was like missing a step on stair. Daly caught her by the armpits as she stumbled, and in her drug-induced drowsiness, El Shoua was very grateful that there was someone with her. There was no time to tarry at the entry, though, and Daly steered her through the crowds like a pilot navigating choppy waters. Half the people around her seemed to be as dazed as El Shoua herself, and she commented on it in slurring words.

"I think it's a plot to sell bed space," muttered Daly.

"Everything's a plot to you," said El Shoua with slow deliberateness and blinking at the bright lights that swam before her as if under water. "When does this ... go away?"

"In about five hours, give or take. Come on, we've got to find our crate and unload it on our ship."

Though El Shoua was of very little help, they managed to locate baggage claims and find their crate. Daly handed over her ticket, it was punched and photocopied, and they were given the crate again with the firm order to return it in two hours or risk renting another time block. Daly nodded, then began a march across the station to where the ships were docked. The crowds were thinner here, as if most people left earlier in the day or later at night. Maybe there was something to Daly's theory -- El Shoua thought that a nap would sound nicer than leaving immediately.

How El Shoua held on to her dog and purse without losing either one of them must have been Daly's doing; she wasn't very conscious of anything as Daly pushed her and pulled the crate on its mule. They made it, somehow, to where her ship was docked. After showing her papers to a checkpoint guard, they were allowed entrance into the hall and escorted to a hatch which the man unlocked.

The guard offered to help them load; Daly declined with minimal politeness and waited until he departed until she stepped through the hatch. Something on the mule would not let it go any further, and she sighed.

"Put your things down inside the ship," she said, "and come back to help me unload."

"Okay," replied El Shoua in a sing-song voice.

She nodded agreement again unnecessarily and walked inside the ship. She put Panya and her purse down on some chair near the door, then wandered back out to Daly. The lid was off the crate, and she was piling things on the ground in the hatch hall. El Shoua gathered some up, walked it to the ship, and dropped the lot down somewhere to her left. Three more trips like that, twice accompanied by Daly, and the crate was emptied. El Shoua eyed the crate suspiciously, aware somewhere that it needed to be returned to the baggage claims.

Daly must have read her mind, because she said, "Go ahead, go to sleep. Bunks are in the back."

Still in a daze, El Shoua turned left and made her way toward the back of the ship. Small details jumped out at her as she passed -- cabinets with bars across them to stop the doors from flying open; a table with grooves where magnetic-bottomed cups could be inserted for special care; what looked suspiciously like the portrait of an Azus diplomat. El Shoua stood before the picture for a few moments, trying to make sure she was seeing the sleek, furred face of an Azus. Why did Daly have this portrait on her ship? Was she actually working for the Azus? Could she be planning to turn El Shoua over to them?

She shook her head and laughed. Daly's paranoia was rubbing off on her. Promising herself to ask Daly when she woke up, El Shoua stumbled through a door in the back, was happy to find a pair of full-sized beds waiting for her, and threw herself down on top of the closest one, fully clothed. She didn't have the energy to undress or even crawl under the sheets, but she did manage to kick off her shoes. Her eyes wouldn't stay opened and focused, so she closed them and lay still. Soon she was asleep.

*

For a minute, she wasn't sure where she was, but the motion of the ship which had woken her up now clued her in. It came rushing back to El Shoua -- the trip to the museum, the book, the shuttle ride. There must have been something really strong in the pill that they'd given her back on the shuttle. She made the conscious decision to wake up and check on Daly, but her eyelids still felt weighted down with anvils and refused to open. There was something moist in her ear. El Shoua raised her hand cautiously up to her face and groped around near her head; it was Panya, curled up with her nose in the warmest spot possible. El Shoua groaned and raised herself up, disturbing the dog and blinking sleep out of her eyes.

Without being certain of how she knew it, El Shoua was aware that they were no longer docked at the space station. It wasn't any one thing which tipped her off; it was the noises the engines made; the way the gravity felt different, heavier but easier than at the station. She reached out to the wall to steady herself as she stepped off the bed unevenly. Panya yawned and jumped off after her.

El Shoua opened the door and shuffled across the floor; it was carpeted thinly in square blocks, like doctor's waiting room tiling. She looked around her for a moment, trying to get her bearings, and then headed into the major area of the ship, the common area she'd been in earlier. The mess she'd made by the door was now mostly put away; there was a pile on the table that looked like it was being sorted through. She pushed past some empty boxes and went to the front of the ship where she could see Daly at some controls.

"Hello," said El Shoua. Panya barked.

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah, I did okay. How long was I out?"

"Four hours," said Daly. "I'd say it hit you hard, but I think it was a culmination of things."

"That was the first time I slept in a real bed since the raid. It felt good."

"What was last night?"

El Shoua smiled. "It was a mistake that I thought we weren't talking about." Daly stared at her a few seconds before punching her in the arm -- hard. "Hey! That hurt!"

"Don't play with big kids till you can take their swipes," said Daly. "You may be half Chinti, but you've got a lot to learn about the species."

El Shoua was beginning to suspect that. She stared at Daly for a long minute, trying to place everything in order. Here she was with someone who'd walked into her life only two days ago and decided to take her along on some half-cocked mission that could turn out to be more dangerous that everything she'd left behind. And yet El Shoua didn't feel like she was in danger with Daly; even the small scares that they'd had were much less intense and frightening that anything she'd been through in the past month. Maybe if she hadn't gone through what she had, she might not have been able to deceive the cops, and maybe she wouldn't have thought that stealing the book was ridiculously easy.

"Why do you have a picture of an Azus hanging in your ship?"

"It's a rental. Can't turn it around, it's been welded into the ship for safety." Daly nodded to the chair next to hers. "Sit down, familiarize yourself with the controls. It might not be exactly what you're used to, but it's simple enough."

"I'm not used to anything," admitted El Shoua. "I don't know how to fly. I can't even drive a car -- we didn't have one."

"Your grandfather never took you up? I knew he was of late repugn to the art of war, but there's nothing more beautiful than flying in a twilight. I would have thought he'd share that with you. He was a pilot in his youth. But no matter -- I'll have you sorted out in no time." Daly scooted her chair back and took stock of the control panel. El Shoua watched her with interest. "We'll begin with navigation, because it does no one any good to fly a ship if they're just going to park it in a sun."

"I can read maps," said El Shoua. "I was studying to make them. That's what I was doing in school before I quit. I was going to help finish surveying the planet. We didn't have a lot of grants for mechanical surveys or anything, so most of our exploration was old-fashioned. I liked that. But I can do stars and meteor currents just as well as I can do mountains and rivers."

"You were studying to be a cartographer?"

"In a way, yeah. I studied cartography. It was a job that would get me out of the house, out of Grant Town, but I didn't have to go and deal with a lot of people, a lot of crowds. I don't like whole groups of folks pressing in on me. I thought it'd be nice, and I can do the maths and even draw passably. I can read maps."

"Then we'll leave that lesson out for now. Here." Daly pointed to several buttons. "These maintain the variance of almost all the controls here. Think of it as the volume buttons for sound. One way goes up, the other goes down. They're very acute, very attuned to what they're modifying, so one push will change the degree only fractionally. Now these buttons here have the standard labels for pitch, attitude, rotation ... you'll see them in almost every spaceship you come across. Now experiment."

"What?" asked El Shoua. "You're not going to show me how to turn it on or off first? How to land?"

"I'd rather you learned how to get us the hell out of whatever has me knocked out of commission before you try to land the ship. Atmospheric flying is dangerous, even in a ship this small, and I wouldn't have you try that until you've got the basics down in empty space first."

El Shoua pressed a button, then tapped the variance control. The ship shook slightly. Tapping it again several more times, she felt the ship bank heavily to the right, like a car taking a sharp turn on a narrow road. She frantically pressed the down button, evening out what she had done. She chanced a stime at Daly, but she was just as impassive in outward appearance as always, neither upset or pleased. El Shoua took that as an invitation to hit more buttons on the rows that Daly had indicated.

The ship nosed downward this time, and El Shoua played with that for a while, amazed at how, once she'd leveled the ship once more that it was virtually impossible to tell that they were flying perpendicular to their original course. Daly leaned forward to read a panel, hit some buttons, and corrected the course. It went on like that for nearly an hour; El Shoua would experiment with what different buttons did, and Daly occasionally sent them back on the right path. Keeping her eyes on the same panels that Daly studied, El Shoua began to see a patten in how Daly kept the ship corrected to the flight path.

It was strange work, flying. She could go up and down and left and right by degrees. The maps that Daly consulted weren't much different from the star charts that El Shoua had studied, just glorified topography maps on a tiny screen. Soon, El Shoua was adept enough at the controls to play at moving the ship and still keep her on course. Daly took this as a sign that it was okay for her to leave El Shoua alone and head toward the belly and make something to eat. El Shoua knew that if they both left the controls, the ship would fly itself, giving off signals of flashing lights and sharp chirps when something unexpected crossed its sensors. It was still nice to be left in charge.

Daly left something cooking in the machine and came back to El Shoua. She was much more vocal in explanations now. For every button El Shoua pushed, Daly had something to say about how it controlled the ship, often giving small anecdotal information about what could go wrong or how it could be used in certain situations. There was, of course, no way that she was going to be able to remember everything from her first lesson, but El Shoua was grateful for the attention given to her.

Soon their dinner was ready, and El Shoua was exhausted enough to relinquish the controls back to the ship computer. Daly didn't say much during, perhaps because she'd already gone over her social contact quota for the week, but El Shoua didn't mind. Her thoughts were occupied with what she had done, trying to qualify and order it in a way that made the most sense to her. What was easiest by far was just to picture the ship itself moving through an artificial space, charted and graphed for her convenience. Numbers she had seen correlated, she hoped, as fractions of the degrees of a standard star chart.

What she needed, she surmised, was a book with the theory of space flight. Once she had the theory down, she could get a much better feel for the controls. She mentioned her need to Daly, who looked thoughtful before replying.

"I suppose we can pick one up at the yard," she said. "There's a small settlement, and enough pilots go through that a book like that is bound to have an audience there."

"Thank you."

"I've got a job for you, Shoua. I think you might like it."

"Yeah?" El Shoua couldn't imagine what job Daly would need of her: she couldn't fly a ship; she could barely steal a book. She didn't have any skills that Daly couldn't match and double, as far as she knew.

"While you were asleep, I finished assembling the map. You said you studied maps -- well, I need a fresh pair of eyes on this one. It would mean a good deal to me if you could look at it. I might need you to have a working knowledge of it later on."

"Wow," said El Shoua. "I mean, um, okay. I can do that, sure."

Daly pushed off from the table and walked over to a cupboard. Sliding the arm left, she opened it and withdrew a roll. El Shoua's eyes popped; had Daly disassembled the book in order to complete her map? El Shoua cleared the table hurriedly and wiped it down with a dry cloth. She was relieved when Daly unfurled the map and it became apparent that what was constructed here was a copy of maps -- several of them, actually, at least seven or eight pieces. Some looked whole unto themselves until they were placed alongside other maps; other sections looked as if they were two pieces torn from one and then put back.

It was amazing. It wasn't exactly a map like El Shoua had envisioned it would be; it covered a far greater distance that she could have guessed. Like looking through a spyglass, it began with a wide expanse of space with numerous stars and other spatial objects charted. It flowed gradually until a smaller, more detailed section of space was examined. One of the torn pieces revealed a solar system with four planets; in a section that did not look like a map at all, one of the planets, distinguishable by its two moons, was beautifully drawn and colored, like an illustration for a book. At the very bottom of the scroll it narrowed till it ended at what looked like the foot of a mountain range.

If El Shoua could hazard a guess, she would say it looked like --

"A treasure map," she said. "Or a map for directions, not just to study."

"These pieces I discovered in a series of eleven books. Eleven, out of the hundreds of books I read in my studies. Taken alone, they're illustrations, fanciful renderings, or, at best, one of many star charts. But together, they're a map. Directions, like you said, bound separate hundreds of millions of years ago."

"Directions to what?"

"Erewhile I've not had any person that I dared share this with," said Daly. She smoothed out the map. "I told you that I am crazy, or perhaps you told me. In any case, I said that I had discovered the map. I told you that which I had kept from my superiors, and I kept from you what I had told them. I...believe... that this map will take us to a place with answers to all of my questions, and I believe that it was left in pieces so that the place would not be discovered unduly or by the wrong person."

"What questions do you have?" asked El Shoua, though she knew at least their ilke.

"How to trap the Azus," said Daly. "If I follow this map, I'll be lead to information. That's all I'm able to understand from the captions. Some of them are senseless to me, filled with words that I have never come across before and which I cannot find in other texts. But it will be enough to ..." Daly paused, as if searching for a word. She bent over the table and scanned the map. Placing her finger on one, El Shoua saw a small line of words in a script that she could not read. "To overcome the Azus and break their darkness with a light that shines like gold."

"It really means this much to you?"

"You don't understand the enmity between the Azus and the Chintis. We've been at war with them for as long as we can remember -- nothing formally declared, you understand, unless its under the guise of some helpless pawn in our game. The humans fought the Chintis for the Azus, and before that the Kolakians. In a time before that, before my grandparents' grandparents were born, we fought a war against the Boros."

"Haven't heard of 'em."

"Of course not," said Daly. "They're gone. We won, wholly, unconditionally. They are no longer anyone's pawn."

El Shoua stood cold with shock at Daly's words.

"So genocide is nothing new to y'all," she said.

"It is everything to us -- we mourned as a people over our mistake for generations. It's why peace was so important to us in the last war. If we had continued, one or the other of our species would have been forced to make the call, and the humans had -- have! -- nothing in the way of war technology that the Chintis have. We've been in constant war for millennia. There's not a history book on Chintia that doesn't mention our struggle against the Azus. Even our fables, our oldest stories, they're filled with the Azus."

"Like the monster under the bed that never went away. If they hate you as much as you hate them --"

"--they do--"

"--then this will never be over. And y'all will keep using innocent species to fight your wars."

"We sent no one in our place!" cried Daly with unusual passion. "We bled honestly as fools were blindfolded and sent our way." She sighed and took several deep, calming breaths that seemed to ease the tension in the room. El Shoua relaxed her jaw and tried to remind herself that she had agreed to help. Daly had begun rolling up the map. "I'm going to bed in a while. We'll be at the yard before lunch tomorrow, so don't bother to unpack. I wouldn't want to fly through Chinti space in this bucket of bolts."

"They wouldn't shoot at us, would they?"

"No, but I'd be laughed at for months, maybe years."

"Why are we going to Chinti space? I thought it was dangerous for me."

"Didn't you read the map?" asked Daly. "That planet's on the other side of Chintian space. We've got to make a trip all the way through to the other side. But don't you worry, El Shoua, nobody's going to even look twice at you. You're just another teg without her thumb; even the men don't bother with girls."

Suddenly uncomfortable, El Shoua cleared her throat as she remembered something that Dr. Afuha'amango had said about the thumbs. The look on her face must have said more than she had meant for it to say, because Daly's attitude changed direction more quickly than a bee in the air. She tried not to look guilty as Daly studied her, but El Shoua couldn't help but recall how Dr. Afuha'amango had alluded to thumbs being instrumental in the sexual practices of what she now knew as the teg. She closed her fingers flat against her fist; the tiny white scar that was her thumbnail just barely missed being covered by her pinky.

"Um," said El Shoua. "I'll find my pyjamas."

Daly seemed for a moment as if she were on the verge of saying something. El Shoua wanted nothing more than to get out of there. To her extreme relief, Daly exited the room without pressing further.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry, but this was part of NaNoWriMo 2007 or so, and I have completely abandoned it over a decade ago. I just wanted to publish it in the wider world. For what it's worth, Daly and El Shoua were TOTALLY going to fall in love.


End file.
